Development of Assessment Tool and Overview of Adaptive Traffic Control Deployments in the U.S

Abstract

Adaptive traffic control systems (ATCSs), have been in use since the late 1970s but have only received significant attention in the U.S. during the last 10 years. Since 2008, the number of these systems has increased by more than 600%. A brief literature review clearly shows a shortage of comprehensive studies that gather data from numerous field evaluations, categorize those evaluations based on several factors, summarize findings, and develop meaningful conclusions. This study addresses this gap by presenting a framework and a tool which enable comprehensive analysis of ATCSs deployed and evaluated in the U.S. Compared with some previous studies, where the focus was on brief and general experiences with ATCSs, the tool presented in this study allows detailed analysis of ATCS deployments and investigation of numerous criteria important for their evaluations. Relevant ATCS data from deploying agencies and literature are collected, discussed, and used to populate a database of the Assessment Tool for Adaptive Traffic Control ([AT]2C). The main purpose of (AT)2C is to help practitioners and researchers to identify, compare, and assess statistics of relevant ATCS technologies, mainly from the perspective of their field benefits.