A novel model to jointly estimate delay and arrival patterns by using high-resolution signal and detection data

Abstract

Delay is one of the most important traffic signal performance measures. In coordinated networks, understanding the characteristics of vehicle arrivals is important for coordination purposes and to properly estimate delays. When observed on a cyclical basis in real-time, distinctive arrival patterns can lead to similar delays, which may go undetected by contemporary delay models. This study proposes a set of enhancements to the Incremental Queue Accumulation (IQA) delay model to overcome the limitations of current models. Additionally, this study proposes a hybrid signal performance measure that combines delay and arrival patterns to depict signal performance truthfully. The enhancements to IQA are realised through an algorithm for the identification of distinctive vehicle arrival groups based on high-resolution signal and detection data. The results demonstrate that the proposed model provides reliable delay estimates (MAPE score in range 4.3–11.2%) while reporting a number of traffic arrival characteristics that are not available from the benchmarked models.