Overview
The intent of this project is to identify, develop, demonstrate and document measures of effectiveness that can be applied to validate the achievement of traffic signal operations objectives. Adaptive Signal Control Technology (ASCT) is an operational strategy that applies tactics aimed at achieving singular or multiple operations objectives. Validation, in the context of this project, is a component of the systems engineering process that evaluates if the system implemented addresses the operations objectives that were articulated as needs during the development of the concept of operations for the system.
This report documents the tools and methodology developed for validation and summarizes the testing of this approach and measures on a field site in Mesa, Arizona where an ASCT system has been deployed for over one year. The intent of the field study was not to evaluate the Mesa ASCT system specifically but rather to demonstrate the application of the validation measures and methodology to a real world implementation of ASCT. The City of Mesa allowed the test phase to include approximately 30 days during which the ASCT was turned off and background coordination patterns were used instead. These 30 days were randomly distributed over the course of two months. Tube counters and Bluetooth detectors were deployed temporarily for volume and travel time data collection. GPS probe data and phase timing and detector status data were collected during the test period. Green occupancy ratio, percent arrivals on green, platoon ratio, and route travel times and reliability metrics were calculated for five intersections in the test area.