Offset Optimization for Arterial Signal Coordination Considering Spillover Prevention

Traffic signal coordination is critically important in a traffic control system, especially when spillovers occur. Based on the arrival-departure pattern, a vehicle delay model was proposed. In order to avoid queue spillovers, queue length limiting was used as the constraint condition of the model. Offset was optimized with the goal of minimizing total vehicle delay. The offset optimization model is formulated as a nonlinear programming program and this study uses the enumeration method, traverses the value range of offset to obtain the optimal offset with the minimum total vehicle delay. Simulation results have demonstrated that the proposed model can significantly reduce the average delays and average queue length compared with the MAXBAND model and SYNCHRO.