A Partition-Enabled Multi-Mode Band Approach to Arterial Traffic Signal Optimization

Arterial traffic signal coordination makes traffic flow more efficient and safer. This paper presents a partition-enabled multi-mode band (PM-BAND) model that is designed to solve the signal coordination problem for arterials with multiple modes, i.e., passenger cars and transit vehicles. The proposed method permits the progression bands to be broken if necessary and optimizes system partition and signal coordination in one unified framework. The impacts of traffic demand of passenger cars and transit vehicles as well as the geometry characteristics of the arterials are taken into account. Signal timings and waiting time of transit vehicles at stations are optimized simultaneously. The PM-BAND model is formulated as a mixed-integer linear program, which can be solved by the standard branch-and-bound technique. Numerical example results have demonstrated that the PM-BAND model can significantly reduce the average number of stops and delay compared with the other models, i.e., MAXBAND and MULTIBAND. Moreover, the progression bands generated by the PM-BAND model have a higher reliability and effectiveness.