Design Process Outline

Pre-Design Data Collection:

The design of signal timing schemes is a fairly simple,
though multi-step process.
First, you need to know most of the roadway conditions
surrounding the intersection you are working on. This
includes the number of lanes, the width of the lanes, the
width of the intersection, the width of the shoulders,
and more.
Second, you need to have information regarding the
composition of the traffic, such as the percentage of
busses and the percentage of trucks within the traffic
stream.
You also need to know the peak hour volumes and peak
fifteen-minute volumes for all of the various
movements.
 The Design Process:
The basic steps in the design process (assuming you are using Webster's
method) are listed below. While this particular listing is oriented toward
Webster's method, most of the other methods incorporate the same
concepts, but in a slightly different way.
1. Decide on a phasing plan.
2. Calculate the length of the intergreen period for each phase of your
cycle.
3. Calculate the minimum green time for each phase based on the
pedestrian crossing time.
4. Calculate the design flow rate for each approach or lane using the peak
hour volume and peak hour factor.
5. Calculate or measure the saturation flow rate for each approach or lane.
6. Find the critical movements or lanes, and calculate the critical flow
ratios.
7. Calculate the optimum cycle length.
8. Allocate the available green time using the critical flow ratios from step
six.
9. Calculate the capacity of the intersection approaches or lanes.
10. Check the capacities/design flow rates and green intervals/minimum
green intervals. Adjust your cycle timing scheme if necessary
 Saturation Flow Rate and Capacity
Saturation Flow Rate can be defined with the following scenario:
Assume that an intersection’s approach signal was to stay green for
an entire hour, and the traffic was as dense as could reasonably be
expected. The number of vehicles that would pass through the
intersection during that hour is the saturation flow rate.
Obviously, certain aspects of the traffic and the roadway will affect the
saturation flow rate of your approach. If your approach has very
narrow lanes, traffic will naturally provide longer gaps between
vehicles, which will reduce your saturation flow rate. If you have
large numbers of turning movements, or large numbers of trucks
and busses, your saturation flow rate will be reduced. Put another
way, the saturation flow rate (s) for a lane group is the maximum
number of vehicles from that lane group that can pass through the
intersection during one hour of continuous green under the
prevailing traffic and roadway conditions. The saturation flow rate
is normally given in terms of straight-through passenger cars per
hour of green. Most design manuals and textbooks provide tables
that give common values for trucks and turning movements in
terms of passenger car units (pcu).
Determining the saturation flow rate can be a somewhat complicated matter.
The saturation flow rate depends on roadway and traffic conditions, which
can vary substantially from one region to another. It’s possible that
someone in the area has already completed a measurement of the
saturation flow rate for an approach similar to yours. If not, you'll need to
measure it in the field. One other possibility, which is used quite
frequently, is to assume an ideal value for the saturation flow rate and
adjust it for the prevailing conditions using adjustment factors. A
saturation flow rate of 1900 vehicles/hour/lane, which corresponds to
saturation headway of about 1.9 seconds, is a fairly common nominal
value. Design manuals usually provide adjustment factors that take
parameters such as lane-width, pedestrian traffic, and traffic composition
into account.
S=SO FW FHV FG FLF FPED
Where:
SO = Base saturation flow rate per hour per lane (1900pcphpl)
Base saturation flow rate - The maximum steady flow rate—expressed in
passenger cars per hour per lane—at which previously stopped passenger
cars can cross the stop line of a signalized intersection under base
conditions, assuming that the green signal is available and no lost times
are experienced.
FW FHV FG FLF FPED = factors of width, heavy vehicles, grade, left turning, and
pedestrian respectively
 Capacity
Capacity is an adjustment of the saturation flow rate that
takes the real signal timing into account, since most signals
are not allowed to permit the continuous movement of one
phase for an hour. If your approach has 30 minutes of green
per hour, you could deduce that the actual capacity of your
approach is about half of the saturation flow rate. The
capacity, therefore, is the maximum hourly flow of vehicles
that can be discharged through the intersection from the
lane group in question under the prevailing traffic,
roadway, and signalization conditions. The formula for
calculating capacity (c) is given below.
c = (g/C) × s
Where:
c = capacity (pcu/hour)
g = Effective green time for the phase in question (sec)
C = Cycle length (sec)
s = Saturation flow rate (pcu/hour)
Capacity can be calculated on several levels, depending on the amount
of information you want to obtain. You could calculate the capacity
for each individual lane, or you could lump the lanes together and
find the capacity of an entire approach. You need to decide what
makes sense for your situation.
Capacity can be used as a reference to gauge the current operation of
the intersection. For example, let us assume that you know the
current flow rate for a lane group and you also know the capacity of
that lane group. If the current flow rate is 10% of the capacity, you
would be inclined to think that too much green time has been
allocated to that particular lane group. You'll see other uses for
capacity as you explore the remaining signal timing design
concepts.
Your first assignment as a transportation engineer is to design a small
signalized intersection. One step in this design process requires
that you find the saturation flow rate for the eastern approach. You
decide to try and calculate the saturation flow rate from field
observations of an approach that is part of an intersection very
similar to yours. After recording the departure headways of the first
few discharging vehicles for several different cycles, you calculate
the average headway and get a value of 2.1 seconds.
 Example &Solution
Calculate the saturation flow rate. If the eastern approach to your
intersection has an estimated green time of 20 seconds and the total cycle
length will be around 45 seconds, average headway 2.1 second ,what is
the approximate capacity for the eastern approach?
Solution
Since we know, from queuing theory that the vehicles in a queue will
discharge at the saturation flow rate we can take the average headway of
those vehicles and convert it into the saturation flow rate. Since one
vehicle entered the intersection every 2.1 seconds when the queue was
discharging, 3600/2.1 vehicles would enter the intersection in an hour if
the queue were long enough and the approach was given a green signal
for an entire hour. Therefore, our saturation flow rate is 1714 veh/hr. Since
we weren't given any information to the contrary, we will assume that
these vehicles were all passenger cars and call our saturation flow rate
1714 pcu/hr.
To find the capacity, we first need to calculate the green ratio (g/C). If the
length of the green interval (g) is 20 seconds and the cycle length (C) is
about 45 seconds, the green ratio will be about 0.44. Capacity is the
product of the green ratio and the saturation flow rate. In this case, the
capacity of the eastern approach would be about 760 pcu/hr.
 Critical Movement or Lane
While each phase of a cycle can service several movements or lanes,
some of these lanes will inevitably require more time than others to
discharge their queue. For example, the right-turn movement of an
approach may service two cars while the straight-through
movement is required to service 30 cars. The net effect is that the
right-turn movement will be finished long before the straight-
through movement. What might seem to be an added complexity is
really an opening for simplicity. If each phase is long enough to
discharge the vehicles in the most demanding lane or movement,
then all of the vehicles in the movements or lanes with lower time
requirements will be discharged as well. This allows the engineer to
focus on one movement per phase instead of all the movements in
each phase.
The movement or lane for a given phase that requires the most green
time is known as the critical movement or critical lane. The critical
movement or lane for each phase can be determined using flow
ratios. The flow ratio is the design (or actual) flow rate divided by
the saturation flow rate. The movement or lane with the highest
flow ratio is the critical movement or critical lane.
Example
 Green Split Calculations
Once you have the total cycle length, you can determine the length of
time that is available for green signal indications by subtracting the
intergreen periods from the total cycle length. But, the result is
useless unless you know how to allocate it to all of the phases of
the cycle.
As explained in the module about critical movement analysis, the
critical movements or lanes are used to distribute the available
green time among all of the phases. The flow ratio for a movement
or lane is the actual (design) flow rate, for that entity, divided by the
saturation flow rate. The critical flow ratio, which is the one that is
important for this calculation, is the flow ratio for the critical
movement or lane.
Green time is allocated using a ratio equation. Each phase is given a
portion of the available green time that is consistent with the ratio
of its critical flow ratio to the sum of all the critical flow ratios. This
calculation is simple to do and hard to say, which makes it
refreshingly different from most of the other calculations we
encounter in engineering.
 Timing Adjustments
Once you have calculated the lengths of the minimum green intervals,
green intervals, and intergreen intervals, as well as the design flow
rates and capacities for each of your phases; it is time to ask
yourself whether or not your results actually work.
The first and most obvious check involves the green intervals. Check
the length of the green interval for each phase. If it is not greater
than the length of the phase's minimum green interval, you need to
bump up the cycle length and add green time to that phase until
the green interval is equal to or greater than the minimum.
The second check involves capacity. If the capacity of a particular
phase is below the design flow rate for that phase, you should back-
calculate the effective green time that would allow the phase to run
at the design flow rate. Once again, simply increasing the cycle
length and allocating more time to the green interval of the
troubled phase will solve the problem.
Webster noted that the cycle length can vary between 0.75Co and
1.5Co without adding much delay, so don't worry too much about
adding a second or two to the nominal cycle length.
 Example
You have just finished allocating the available green time to a two-phase cycle. The actual (design) flow
rates for the two critical lanes are 350 pcu/hr and 700 pcu/hr respectively. The optimum cycle
length was 55 seconds and of the available green time, 14 seconds were allocated to phase one
(350 pcu/hour) and 27 seconds were allocated to phase two (700 pcu/hr). Both phases have
intergreen intervals of 6 seconds. The lengths of the pedestrian WALK intervals for phases one and
two are 10 seconds and 16 seconds respectively. The width of the intersection for phases one and
two is 14.4 m and 20.4 respectively. Assume the saturation flow rate is 1900 pcu/hr for both lanes.
Does this timing scheme require any adjustments? If so, what should the final signal timing plan
be?
Solution
The first thing we will check is the capacities of the two critical lanes. We'll calculate the capacities by
multiplying the green ratio (g/C) by the saturation flow rate (s). For phase one, the green ratio is
14/55 and the saturation flow rate is 1900 pcu/hr. This gives a capacity of 484 pcu/hr, which is more
than adequate to handle the 350 pcu/hr design flow rate. Phase two has a capacity of 933 pcu/hr,
which is also more than adequate to handle its design flow rate.
Next, we will check the minimum length of the green interval based on pedestrian movements. In phase
one, the WALK interval is 10 seconds long and the crossing time is 14.4/1.2 or 12 seconds. The total
time required for pedestrians is 22 seconds. The vehicular movement provides only 14 seconds of
green and 6 seconds of intergreen. Thus, the total time before the next phase begins is only 20
seconds. To remedy this, two seconds should be added to both the total cycle time and the green
interval for phase number one. Pedestrians in phase number two receive 16 seconds of WALK time
and require20.4/1.2 = 17 seconds of crossing time. The total time required for the pedestrians in
phase number two is, therefore, 33 seconds. The green interval and intergreen interval for phase
number two add up to 33 seconds, which perfectly matches the pedestrian crossing time.
As it turns out, phase one's green interval needed to be increased by two seconds in order to serve the
pedestrian movements. The total cycle length and phase one's green interval were both increased
by two seconds, while all the other signal timing variables were left untouched.
 Computing Delay and LOS
One way to check an existing or planned signal timing scheme
is to calculate the delay experienced by those who are
using, or who will use, the intersection. The delay
experienced by the average vehicle can be directly related
to a level of service (LOS). The LOS categories, which are
listed below, contain information about the progression of
traffic under the delay conditions that they represent. This
allows you, as a designer or evaluator, to visualize and
understand the traffic flow conditions surrounding an
intersection, even though the intersection might still be on
the drawing board.
The first step in the LOS analysis is to calculate the average
delay per vehicle for various portions of the intersection.
You might be interested in the LOS of an entire approach,
or alternatively, you might be interested in the LOS of each
individual lane. The equation for the average vehicle delay
is given below
Level of Service A - Operations with low delay, or delays of less than
5.0 seconds per vehicle. This LOS is reached when most of the
oncoming vehicles enter the signal during the green phase, and the
driving conditions are ideal in all other respects as well.
Level of Service B - Operations with delays between 5.1 and 15.0
seconds per vehicle. This LOS implies good progression, with some
vehicles arriving during the red phase.
Level of Service C - Operations with delays between 15.1 and 25.0
seconds per vehicle. This LOS witnesses longer cycle lengths and fair
progression.
Level of Service D - Operations with delays between 25.1 and 40.0
seconds per vehicle. At this LOS, congestion is noticeable and longer
delays may result from a combination of unfavorable progression,
long cycle lengths, and high V/c ratios.
Level of Service E - Operations with delay between 40.1 and 60.0
seconds per vehicle. This LOS is considered unacceptable by most
drivers. This occurs under over-saturated intersection conditions
(V/c ratios over 1.0), and can also be attributed to long cycle lengths
and poor progression.
As you can see by now, the LOS illuminates the qualitative aspects of
signal operation.