Effect of Different Traffic Signal Control Plans on Simulation of Hurricane Evacuation Traffic

The majority of hurricane evacuation modeling studies concentrate on evacuation traffic on freeways with relatively little attention being given to traffic on arterials. This study is focused on evaluating the evacuation efficiency of a network under different traffic signal settings on arterials using microscopic simulation. This is achieved by changing the traffic signal settings from existing signal timing plans to flashing yellow on major evacuation routes and flashing red on cross streets, for a given evacuation order. Time-dependent origin-destination matrices for hurricane evacuation up to 72 hours away from landfall for No Evacuation order, as well as a Voluntary/Mandatory Evacuation order issued at 48 hours before landfall, was generated using Hurricane Evacuation Modeling Package. A simulation database of New Orleans was created in TransModeler to perform this relative study. The findings of the study indicate that, having flashing yellow on major evacuation route and flashing red on minor cross streets is significantly better than having current existing signal timing plans in terms of total delay per trip and average speeds, whereas for VHT (vehicle hours traveled) per trip and VMT (vehicle miles traveled) per trip the difference is significantly different only in high demand intervals during hurricane evacuation for both with and without an evacuation order issued