Improving Coordinated Traffic Signal Timing through Connected Vehicle Technology

For coordinated traffic control systems of traffic signals, timing offset is an important parameter that should account for the effect of queued vehicles at signals, travel speeds between intersections and the roadway geographic characteristics. In order to improve coordinated signal timing in the short term, this dissertation research developed an approach to optimize timing offset based on queue length information that will soon be available from connected vehicles (CVs) in the near future. The benefits of this approach were measured in an urban street corridor network and a suburban highway corridor network using the simulation program VISSIM. \ud The simulation results shows that using the queue measurements in signal retiming provided a better optimized signal coordination during the peak hours. Up to 21.6% less delay and 13.9% less stops when compared to the current signal retiming approach. Based on multiple runs of simulation under different connected vehicle market penetration rates, at least 60% penetration rate was required for this approach.\u