International Journal of Transportation Science and Technology 11 (2022) 509–521

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

International Journal of Transportation

Science and Technology
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijtst

Green time usage metrics on signalized intersections and

arterials using high-resolution traffic data
Renato Guadamuz a, Houjun Tang b, Zhengyao Yu b, S. Ilgin Guler b,⇑, Vikash V. Gayah b
a
KLJ Engineering, St. Paul, MN, United States
b
The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The performance of traffic signal phasing and timing (SPaT) plans are directly related to
Received 5 March 2021 temporal fluctuations in traffic volumes and their distribution across competing move-
Received in revised form 3 June 2021 ments at the intersection. A well-timed signal plan generally allocates green times in pro-
Accepted 26 June 2021
portion to the observed volumes. With the advance of data collection techniques and
Available online 6 July 2021
technology, it is possible to obtain and use high-resolution traffic data using detectors at
intersections to measure the real-time performance of the SPaT plan to better achieve this
Keywords:
goal. This study introduces novel green time metrics and methods to evaluate the effi-
SPaT
Signal phase
ciency of green time allocation along arterials and at individual intersections using auto-
Signal timing mated, real-time, and high-resolution traffic data. An empirical application is presented
Traffic operations for four intersections along a major radial arterial in Salt Lake City, Utah and a detailed
Intersection operation analysis of the phases and movements for a single intersection located on that arterial.
High-resolution traffic data The proposed methods and results can help identify opportunities to improve the signal
timing plan for the entire corridor or movements within secondary approaches by identi-
fying locations and/or time periods where signal timing does not align well with observed
traffic volumes. These metrics can be automated to provide traffic engineers with an alert
as to when a particular intersection should be examined as a candidate for signal retiming,
and they can also help identify what changes need to be made with the current SPaT plans.
Ó 2021 Tongji University and Tongji University Press. Publishing Services by Elsevier B.V.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Introduction

Traffic signals provide temporal separation among conflicting movements at intersections to allow safe and efficient
vehicular movement at these locations. The constant reallocation of capacity among different movements usually makes sig-
nalized intersections one of the most restrictive bottlenecks in urban areas (Gayah et al, 2015). Although proper geometric
design can help maximize the intersection capacity and reduce vehicular delay caused by traffic signals, it is pertinent to
implement and update the signal phasing and timing plans to help achieve these goals.
It is still common practice in signal retiming to select a Signal Phasing and Timing (SPaT) plan based on aggregated traffic
volumes obtained from manual data collection. In most cases, turning movement counts are collected over peak periods (e.g.,
morning peak and afternoon peak) over the course of 24–48 hours, and signal phasing and timing plans are then designed

Peer review under responsibility of Tongji University and Tongji University Press.
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: sig123@psu.edu (S.I. Guler).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijtst.2021.06.006
2046-0430/Ó 2021 Tongji University and Tongji University Press. Publishing Services by Elsevier B.V.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
R. Guadamuz, H. Tang, Z. Yu et al. International Journal of Transportation Science and Technology 11 (2022) 509–521

based on these observed traffic patterns, which are assumed to represent typical peak periods (Roess, 2019). Since the pro-
cess requires manual traffic data collection, signals often go a very long time (on the scale of years) before they are retimed.
Signal timings plans are typically only designed for a few typical time periods (e.g., AM, PM, and midday peaks) and are gen-
erally not very efficient for the rest of the day. Furthermore, the derived signal timing plan might not actually be well-suited
for actual volumes at that location over a long period, particularly if the volume information was obtained during atypical
periods.
More recently, modern data collection methods have been implemented using detectors (e.g., electromagnetic, infrared,
radar, and video-based) to monitor traffic operations in real-time. Such data can be integrated into traffic signal systems so
that they are able to dynamically respond to prevailing traffic conditions. For example, several adaptive traffic signal control
systems, such as SCATS (Lowrie, 1990) and SCOOT (Hunt et al., 1982; Robertson and Bretherton, 1991), can change signal
timings to better match actual traffic demands and facilitate signal coordination. Papageorgiou et al., 2003 provides an over-
view of several dynamic traffic control systems that exist. Although such systems improve traffic operations, they are usually
expensive, and their proprietary nature seriously limits their customization. Several research efforts have developed opti-
mization frameworks to improve signal timings at both individual intersections and along arterials using aggregated data
obtained from traffic detectors (e.g., flows over 30-second or 5-minute periods). One such work used traffic data to develop
decision rules to robustly optimize signal control policies (Liu et al., 2015), while another considered priority to transit vehi-
cles (Yu et al., 2017). Other studies have used high-resolution detector data to improve offsets on signalized arterials (Day
et al., 2014; Hu and Liu, 2013) and even road safety and law enforcement regarding yellow and red-light running (Chen et al.,
2017; Lu et al., 2015; Muralidharan et al., 2016). And several studies have considered how individual vehicle trajectory data
from probe vehicles or Connected Vehicles could be used to improve signal timings in real-time (Feng et al., 2015; Guler
et al., 2014; Dunn et al., 2019; Liang et al., 2020).
Another flexible and cost-efficient approach to make use of existing detectors might be developing algorithms that can
measure the efficiency of intersection operations directly based on the raw detector data. Such information can then be used
to quantify signal performance and serve as justification for retiming signals sooner than would otherwise be done. One such
study considered the impacts of active traffic management by utilizing detector data and analyzing changes to vehicle vol-
umes and travel times (Lavrenz et al., 2016). Similarly, a recent study has considered travel time, throughput volume, split
failure, pedestrian and transit delays and reliability index to evaluate intersection operations (Cheng, 2020). A few studies
have developed metrics to analyze signal operations including percent arrival on green, green or red occupancy ratio, volume
to capacity ratio, oversaturation severity index, etc. (Day et al., 2014; Smaglik et al., 2007; Wu et al., 2010). One line of work
utilizes occupancy information to diagnose split failures (e.g., Day et al., 2018; Freije et al., 2014; Li et al., 2017; Cheng, 2020).
The work conducted on split failures aims to detect when split lengths are not correct by analyzing phases during which a
high occupancy is observed. The occupancy-based measures can be misleading since the interpretation of occupancy ratios
depend significantly on detector geometry (the length and number of lanes the detector covers), the traffic mix (e.g., pres-
ence of trucks) and the speed of vehicles. Hence, a better approach is to rely on flow-based metrics that are more resilient to
intersection specific geometric and vehicular details.
Work on evaluating the effectiveness of arterial operations using signal data is limited. The most commonly used
approach is the Purdue Coordination Diagram, which presents signal cycles over time as a series of alternating red and green
phases and plots arriving vehicles to visualize the percent arrival on green and red (Day et al., 2010; Sajjadi et al., 2016). This
plot can be useful to understand the quality of signal progression. Other studies have considered arterial operations using
performance metrics such as allocation of green time between competing phases (Brennan et al., 2011), or travel speed,
number of stops, cycle length and segment length (Yue et al., 2021). However, to the authors’ knowledge, existing work
has focused on analyzing the arterial operations as a whole without considering the efficiency of individual phases and pos-
sible retiming of individual intersections.
To address these issues, the present study focuses on developing easily understandable metrics using high-resolution
intersection data that can be used to quantify signal plan performance over time, including both fixed or actuated/adaptive
traffic signals. Two metrics are proposed as a part of this effort: normalized flow during the green interval and unused green
time. The former indicates how efficiently each green phase is being used and can provide an indication of intersection level
efficiency, while the latter provides a measure of wasted time that might be better allocated to another phase on arterials.
The metrics are illustrated on several traffic signals along a signalized arterial corridor in Salt Lake City, Utah.
The remainder of this work is organized as follows. First, the details about the data used in this study are introduced. The
methodology section presents the green time metrics proposed and the algorithms used to evaluate the efficiency of the
arterial road and the intersections. The results and visualizations offer an example application of the metrics and algorithms.
Finally, the concluding remarks summarize the applications, limitations, and future work from this study.

Location and data description

This paper utilizes high-resolution detector data obtained from Salt Lake City, Utah. The high-resolution signal data con-
sists of active phase events for the signal controller and detector events for loop detectors, with a very fine temporal reso-
lution (e.g., 0.1 seconds) (Sturdevant et al., 2012). The signal controller events are recorded for each phase while the detector
events are recorded for each detector, these events are shown in Table 1.
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Table 1
List of signal and detector events.

Signal Events Detector Events

Phase On Detector Off
Phase Begin Green Detector On
Phase Min Complete
Phase Gap Out
Phase Max Out
Phase Force Off
Phase Green Termination
Phase Begin Yellow Clearance
Phase End Yellow Clearance
Phase Begin Red Clearance
Phase End Red Clearance

Fig. 1. Location of arterial and intersections analyzed. (Maps from: Open Street Map).

The above-described high-resolution data were obtained for 4 signalized intersections along a 0.8-mile segment of an
arterial in Salt Lake City, Utah, Route 89 (also named as 300 W or John Stockton Drive). This 6-lane divided arterial is located
in the north of Salt Lake City, see Fig. 1. This arterial connects the central business district (CBD) of Salt Lake City to North Salt
Lake City and Bountiful, which are heavily residential and have lower urban density. Moreover, this road eventually leads to
Ogden, which is a city that serves as a gateway to ski resorts.
Intersection 7125 was selected for a detailed intersection-level analysis that considered all phases and movements since
the detectors at this intersection provide lane-by-lane vehicle counts for all approaches. The analysis of this intersection pro-
vides an illustration of the type of metrics that can be determined when all movements have high-resolution data. For this
intersection, the east/west approach is a four-lane arterial (named North Temple St), however, since the coordination is pro-
vided along the north/south direction the east/west direction will be referred to as the minor approach in this paper. All
intersections from this corridor are standard four-leg signalized intersections (see Fig. 2) and experience relatively high traf-
fic volumes. Detectors are located immediately upstream of the signals at all approaches. An eight-phase plan operates at
this intersection as numbered in Fig. 2, and correspond to north/south through, north/south protected left turn, east/west
through and east/west protected left turn. Further, pedestrian intervals are called based on pedestrian push buttons.

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Fig. 2. Phase coding convention for arterials running northbound/southbound (UDOT, 2018).

Fig. 3. Cumulative vehicle counts for subject intersections.

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Intersections 7122, 7123, 7124, and 7125 (highlighted in Fig. 1) were chosen for the arterial level analysis. While four
other intersections to the south of those identified above exist, these were omitted from the rest of the analyses because they
either had no count detectors for the Northbound and Southbound approaches or were just pedestrian crossings without
recorded traffic counts. For the arterial analysis, only the northbound and southbound approaches were considered. These
intersections were used to demonstrate the type of arterial-level metrics that can be provided when all intersections along
an arterial have high-resolution data available for the common major directional movement.
In total, the raw dataset included 21.5 million detector and signal events for the month of July 2018 across all four inter-
sections, which is extremely computationally expensive for most analytical software. To reduce the computational burden, a
regular workday in July was chosen for the analysis to represent typical off-ski-season traffic. Hence, the analysis considered
high-definition signal data for 24 hours on Wednesday, July 11, 2018, to demonstrate the within-day variations of the pro-
posed metrics for what was considered as a typical day. For the detailed intersection analysis of 7125, this corresponded to
54,340 detector events. Additionally, the signal data was reduced by only considering green interval events and omitting
other phases. This resulted in 4,286 green-phase records for intersection 7125. Only the through and through-right move-
ments for northbound and southbound approaches were used for the arterial analysis of intersections 7122, 7123, 7124
and 7125. This reduced the number of detector records to 85,434, and a total of 15,535 green-phase records were used.
In general, the algorithms and metrics developed in this study are not limited to these choices and can be applied to most
intersections subject to data availability.
Fig. 3 shows the cumulative plots of vehicle counts throughout the chosen workday for the northbound and southbound
directions at the four intersections analyzed. The southbound direction has a clear morning-peak due to the commuters who
drive to work from the northern residential areas to the CBD. The curve appears to be relatively constant for the remainder of
the day. The opposite holds for the northbound direction, which experiences an afternoon peak.
Fig. 3 shows that the total vehicle traffic for any intersection is between 17,000 and 25,000 vehicles/day. According to the
records from the Utah Department of Transportation, the estimated annual average daily traffic (AADT) for this arterial was
19,000 vehicles in 2016 (UDOT Google Earth). This helps to validate the quality and accuracy of the data being used consid-
ering variations in demand, uniqueness of intersections, shared through-right movements in a single lane, and annual traffic
growth.
Details about preparations of the signal plan and detector data—as well as proposed operational metrics—are described in
the next section.

Methodology

The methodology is described in two subsections: 1) data processing to consolidate raw detector and sensor events into
useful vehicle counts and signal phasing and timing details; and, 2) green time usage metrics for intersections and arterials.
The goal of this work is to identify specific phases for which the signal timing plan might not work and revisit the SPaT
plan for these intersections to identify potential alternatives for improvements. The metrics developed can be used for signal
timing of fixed-time or coordinated signals, and they can also be used to change parameters associated with actuated or
adaptive traffic signals. While non-fixed signals can adapt to variations in traffic demand during the day, they are still con-
strained by some initial chosen parameters, such as minimum or maximum green duration or gap time, which may need to
be recalibrated over time.

Raw data processing

The detectors at the intersections considered in this study report different types of counts (e.g., lane-by-lane count, stop
bar presence, advanced counts) and have different formats for recorded events. For conciseness of the paper, the methodol-
ogy is presented generally without going into the details for different types of detectors. Detector data is typically reported as
the time a detector was turned on and then off with a very precise timestamp (0.1 seconds for the data used). The on and off
events of detectors typically correspond to a vehicle arriving to the detector and then departing the detector, respectively.
This process is repeated for every vehicle, which essentially provides the vehicle counts for any period, regardless of the sig-
nal phasing. If available, these data can be used on a lane-by-lane basis to analyze all phases and movements independently
(e.g., as done for intersection 7125).
The raw data also contains events for the signal plan. Specifically, data are available for the beginning and termination
timestamp of the green, yellow, and red intervals for each signal (Sturdevant et al., 2012). In this study, only the events per-
taining to the green interval are utilized. The time between ‘‘phase green begins” and ‘‘phase green terminates” denotes the
green interval for a specific phase. As any source of data, errors exist in the detector and signal data, for instance, some begin-
ning or ending events may be recorded incorrectly or even omitted altogether. Therefore, to guarantee the quality of the data
used, an additional layer of filter is used to discard records that appear to be missing information. The following conditions
were used to remove data for a given green interval from the dataset: 1) two consecutive green begin events without an
intermediate green end event; 2) two consecutive green end events without an intermediate green begin event; and, 3)
green durations that exceed the 95th percentile assuming a log-normal distribution of the green durations estimated from
the observed mean and standard deviation parameter estimations. The third condition is added since very large green times
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could be indicative of a missing end green trigger, i.e., the green time calculated spans the beginning of the current green
phase to the end of the next green phase, which is indeed a different phase. Manual inspection of the data confirmed that
this method was able to correctly identify and discard phases from missing event records. As a result, 2.5% of all records were
discarded and the remaining 97.5% of the records were retained for analysis.
Finally, for a standard four-leg arterial intersection where the major street runs northbound/southbound, the duration of
the green intervals for the eight phases shown in Fig. 2 are determined. Note that in this work, the specific phase plan is not
considered. For the detailed intersection analyses, all green intervals from all approaches are used, while for the arterial
green time measures, only the duration of the green interval for the through phases for the northbound and southbound
approaches are used.

Intersection-level metrics

The detector data and the signal plan are then combined into a single dataset that can be used to assign traffic counts with
the signal phases. Specifically, cumulative vehicle departure counts are determined for each specific green interval that
occurred at the intersection. Since the detectors are located at the stop bar for this intersection, the cumulative vehicle
counts from these detectors are assumed to represent the cumulative vehicle counts passing the intersection. We define
N i;t as the number of vehicles that discharge during the green interval for a given movement, i, and the time period, t.
The length of the corresponding green interval is defined as Gi;t . This data is obtained based on the timestamp of each detec-
tor event and the phase in which each event occurred, which are available in both datasets.
If different movements share at least one lane, then these movements are considered to be in the same lane group. For
example, when lanes serving shared through and right-turn movements exist the associated through and right-turning vehi-
cles form a lane group. For intersection 7125 where lane-by-lane information was available, the vehicle counts (N i;t ) and
green interval durations (Gi;t ) were computed for all phases and movements. For the remaining intersections, vehicle counts,
and green interval durations were only computed for the northbound/southbound through and through-right movements
(i.e., phases 2 and 6 of Fig. 2) due to the aggregated nature of the data.
Twp metrics are proposed to describe the operational efficiency of individual signals. These are the normalized green flow
(NGF), qi;t , and the proportion of green times without traffic. The normalized green flow can help identify near saturated or
over saturated phases, while the proportion of green times without traffic can help identify undersaturated or unused
phases. Hence, these two metrics can be used jointly to understand signal timing needs of an intersection.
The NGF is defined as the number of vehicles per minute of green per lane. It can be calculated for each green phase move-
ment using Equation (1), as follows:

Ni;t
qi;t ¼ ½v eh=mingreen=lane ð1Þ
Li  Gi;t

where N i;t is the number of vehicles that discharge for a green phase movement, i, for a time period, t; Gi;t is the duration of
the green interval, i, for a time period, t; Li is the number of lanes for green phase movement, i. The NGF represents the rate
that vehicles can discharge through each lane during the green interval and should be approximately equal to the saturation
flow of the corresponding phase if the intersection was serving vehicles at capacity during that phase. For example, at a typ-
ical urban roadway with capacity 1500 veh/hour/lane, the maximum value the normalized green flow should approximately
25 veh/min green/lane for a given phase. This would occur if that phase were completely saturated and always serving vehi-
cles during each green interval. Notice that it is not possible differentiate between near saturated and over saturated scenar-
ios using this metric. However, in this work, both near saturation and over saturation states are treated as problematic since
small fluctuations in demand can easily tip a near saturated scenario into an over saturated scenario. Hence, the system
could benefit from signal retiming or at least the signal timing could be reexamined in either scenario.
Individual, high-resolution real-time data can be highly volatile due to the randomness in the arrival of vehicles. Hence,
the observations are computed for all green intervals during discrete 15-minute intervals to reduce the volatility and provide
more meaningful data visualization. Moreover, signal control reports and turning movement count data are commonly pro-
vided in 15-minute increments (depending on the type of detectors, controllers, and providers) even for real-time purposes.
However, the use of a 15-minute interval can be modified depending on the needs of the analyses. Each of the original green
intervals are classified into the corresponding analysis interval based on their timestamp for the beginning of green. With
this, a subset of the original observations contained in any given 15-minute period is obtained and measures are calculated
for these subsets.
For the green interval duration and the NGF, the average over each 15-minute analysis period is computed for each phase.
In addition, the average NGF across all phases, the standard deviation across all phases, and the difference in the largest and
smallest NGF values observed across all unique intersection phases is determined for each analysis period. The latter metric
provides a measure of the variability of the efficiency between competing phases. If this measure, which we call variability of
normalized green flow, is small, this suggests that green time is typically allocated in line with traffic volumes across the
eight phases. If this metric is large, this suggests that one or more phases may be heavily utilized while others are not. This
latter case would represent a situation where signal timing might need to be adjusted. Specifically, signal timing might be
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able to be improved by ‘‘borrowing” green time from the less uses phase(s) and reallocating this time to the more heavily
used phase(s).
The proportion of green intervals with very small NGF values is also determined considering these aggregated periods.
The proportion of green intervals without traffic during any period is determined as shown in Eqn. (2):
Ptþ15
UðiÞ
Pnov ehicles ¼ t
Ptþ15 ð2Þ
t i
where UðiÞ is an indicator variable that takes the value of 1 if qi;t ¼ 08ðt; t þ 15Þ for a green phase movement, i, for a time
period, t. Hence, the numerator represents the number of phases during which zero vehicles discharge through the intersec-
tion, and the denominator represents the total number of phases in the 15-minute period. Additionally, the same metric is
calculated when UðiÞ is an indicator variable that takes the value of 1 if qi;t  28ðt; t þ 15Þ to represent the proportion of
green intervals that serve two or fewer vehicles per minute green per lane. The measure is proposed for 15-minute bins since
the Highway Capacity Manual often aggregates traffic volumes for 15-minute periods to account for random variations in car
demand (HCM 2010).

Arterial-level metrics

Two metrics are proposed to describe the operational efficiency of signals along arterials using the reduced-data avail-
able: 1) the minimum average unused green time at the beginning of each green phase between two major opposing travel
directions (e.g., northbound and southbound); and, 2) the minimum average unused green time at the end of each green
phase between two major travel directions (e.g., northbound and southbound). Note that these metrics are proposed assum-
ing a generally even usage of lanes dedicated for a specific phase. The average unused green time at the beginning of each
green phase is defined as the average time between which the signal turns green and the first vehicle crosses the intersec-
tion, and the average unused green time at the end of each green phase is defined as the average time between which the last
vehicle crosses the intersection and the green phase ends. For each of these, the minimum value is selected between the two
directions that move simultaneously at the intersection (without lack of generality, north/south and east/west). The mini-
mum is used because when signals are coordinated, one direction (e.g., northbound) might serve a heavy traffic volume
while the other (e.g., southbound) has a lot of unused green time. In this case, the unused green time in the southbound
direction is driven by the need for the green time in the northbound direction. The minimum of these two values between
the two opposing major travel directions is considered since along arterials typically one direction would become con-
strained in the signal timing due to the directionality of demand. However, if there is unused green time at the beginning
or the end of the green interval on both directions this can indicate general problems with the signal timing. Furthermore,
unused green time in the beginning of the phase could indicate that expected initial queues, e.g., those that turn left and right
from the upstream intersection, are not as prominent as expected. Initial and final unused green time from green phases with
less than five seconds were discarded since shortening these phases further would not be feasible.
The unused green time may disrupt the expected green wave (Warberg et al., 2008) along the arterial if it does not pro-
vide a uniform green phasing for the arriving vehicles. Ideally, both the initial and final green time would be very small such
that green time is not wasted. Large variations in unused green time may indicate that the signal phasing is not responding
well to low demands in the arterial road. In general, while both are problematic, it may be easier to resolve issues related to
the initial unused green time (as compared to the unused green time at the end of the phase) by changing signal timing. This
is because the initial unused green time highly depends on the signal timing of adjacent intersections whereas the final
unused green time depends mostly on the arrival pattern of vehicles.

Results

This section illustrates how the metrics proposed in the Methodology section can be used to analyze intersection oper-
ations for the sample location in Salt Lake City, Utah. The two subsections provide intersection-level and the arterial-level
analyses, respectively.

Detailed intersection-level green time usage measures

The mean value for the green interval durations of different phases were calculated for discrete 15-minute time intervals
and provided in Fig. 4 for intersection 7125. The available phases are: 1) Phase 1, southbound protected left turn (SBL), 2)
Phase 2, northbound through and northbound right turn (NBT&NBR), 3) Phase 3, westbound protected left turn (WBL), 4)
Phase 4, eastbound through and eastbound right turn (EBT&EBR), 5) Phase 5, northbound protected left turn (NBL), 6) Phase
6, southbound through and southbound right turn (SBT&SBR), 7) Phase 7, eastbound protected left turn (EBL), and 8) Phase 8,
westbound through and westbound right turn (WBT&WBR). The figure is divided into Fig. 4a and 4b for the northbound/-
southbound phases and eastbound/westbound phases, respectively.
In this figure, the thickness of the line is proportional to the normalized green flow and can be seen as a proxy for the
relative use of the associated movement during its green phase. Note that the NGF should not be confused with higher
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Fig. 4. Average green interval duration aggregated every 15 minutes for each phase.

overall traffic counts: movements with higher traffic counts can have a smaller normalized green flow if the movement also
receives larger green time or is served using a larger number of lanes. The NGF normalizes this to provide a consistent and
comparable measure that can be used across all movements.
Notice that the left-turn movements (e.g., Phases 3 and 7) have much less green time than other movements, and the
north–south movements have the highest green times. Both are to be expected since the intersection lies along a heavily
traveled north–south corridor. In general, low NGF with high green interval durations are undesirable, e.g., Phase 6 (SBT
& SBR). In this case, some of the green time could be allocated to a different movement without significantly impacting
the operational efficiency of the movement. Additionally, very high NGF values with low green interval durations can also
indicate a problem, e.g., the left-turn Phases 3 (WBL) and 7 (EBL). In this case, the movement is operating near saturation
(or in an oversaturated manner) with a small green duration and hence could benefit from a longer green duration or a
shorter cycle length. These are indicators of potential need for retiming at this signal.
To further analyze the intersection as a whole, the NGF is first averaged across all phases. The change in average NGF
across all phases is presented in Fig. 5a. The NGF has two peaks, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. However, these
peaks are short lived, and most of the time is spent below capacity. This implies that there could be room for improvement in
the signal timing plan.
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15

(veh/min-green/ln)
Average NGF
10

00:00 06:00 12:00 18:00 24:00

Time of day on 2018/07/11

(a)

10
Standard deviation of NGF
(veh/min-green/ln)

00:00 06:00 12:00 18:00 24:00

Time of day on 2018/07/11

(b)

30
(veh/min-green/ln)
Range of NGF

20

10

00:00 06:00 12:00 18:00 24:00

Time of day on 2018/07/11

(c)
Fig. 5. Normalized green flow (NGF) aggregated every 15 minutes across all phases: a) average, b) standard deviation, and c) statistical range.

To investigate this further, variability of normalized green flow—measured as the standard deviation of NGF across all
phases—and the range of observed values (i.e., the difference between the maximum and minimum NGF during a time
period) are shown in Fig. 5b and c, respectively. Both show that during some time periods, the NGF is not well distributed
among different approaches (i.e., high variations). For example, the standard deviation is high during the morning peak,
and the range of NGF is large both during the morning and afternoon peaks. Overall, these measures and figures might help
better understand not only if the overall level of service is adequate but also if specific approaches need additional green
time.
Fig. 6 shows the proportion of green intervals with no green flow or very low NGF (two or fewer vehicles per minute green
per lane), respectively. In these figures, the size of the dot represents the total number of green intervals during the 15-
minute period. Note that low proportions with low NGF (i.e., dots on the bottom of the figure) are desirable because it
implies that green times are used efficiently. However, the average NGF should still be considered in these scenarios to check
for potential near saturated and oversaturated situations. On the other hand, large proportions of low discharge flow are
undesirable and imply that phases are underutilized. Examining Fig. 6 more closely, notice that Phase 1 (southbound pro-
tected left turn) consistently has very high proportions of no NGF during the green time. This green time could potentially

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Fig. 6. Proportion of green intervals with zero or low NGF aggregated every 15 minutes for each phase.

Fig. 7. Minimum of unused green time before first vehicle arrival between the Northbound and Southbound approaches for each time period.

be allocated to other movements (since the green time is sufficiently long to do so, see Fig. 4). Additionally, Phase 6 has a
large proportion of underutilized phases, which was also observed by considering the NGF alone. Additionally, the size of
the dot can also be useful to understand the magnitude of the issue: larger dots towards the top of the graphs represent
phase that experience underutilization more frequently.

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Fig. 8. Minimum of unused green time after last vehicle arrival between the Northbound and Southbound approaches for each time period.

Arterial green time measures

The arterial measure is the unused green time for the main movement along the arterial (northbound through and south-
bound through); specifically, the minimum of the unused time before the first vehicle arrival (Fig. 7) and after the last vehicle
arrival (Fig. 8) between the northbound and southbound directions. In each figure, the minimum unused time in 15-minute
time periods is shown for all the intersections shown in Fig. 1. The size of each point indicates the average green interval
(larger circles have larger average green times) for the approach with the minimum unused green time and the color refers
to the average NGF during the green intervals (the brighter the color the higher the average green flow for those 15 minutes).
Data for some 15-minute periods are missing, predominantly during the night. This occurs for two reasons: 1) the filters
described in the methodology section eliminated that specific data point, mostly due to very short green intervals less than
5 seconds; or, 2) no vehicles passed the intersection in the northbound or southbound direction during the 15 minutes, and,
hence, there is no time before or after any vehicle.
In general, light-blue circles towards the bottom of the plots are desirable since they indicate that there is very little
unused time in the beginning of the phases (and these phases have larger demand). On the other hand, darker circles towards
the top of the plot are undesirable, since these indicate large portions of unused green time (and low utilization in general).
The green time for such phases could be allocated to other phases without much impact on arterial road operations.
Fig. 7 presents the minimum of the unused green time at the beginning of the green interval between the northbound and
southbound directions. In general, many of the intersections have larger unused green times during the off-peak (i.e., early
mornings and late nights), and these time periods are also associated with low NGF values. The large unused green times
during the off-peak are not indicative of a problem with the signal timing plan as unused green times are only indicative
of a problem if there is sufficient demand (perhaps from other directions) that might be able to make use of this green time.
During the day when demand is higher, most of the intersections exhibit very small unused green times. However, some
issues exist especially at intersections 7123 and 7124 where larger variation in unused green times during the day are
observed. This is especially problematic for intersection 7123 since it has longer green phases than the remainder of the
intersections (average of 55.3 seconds for intersection 7123 and 47.0 seconds for the remainder). The unused green time
at the beginning of the green interval is much lower in general for intersection 7125 (6.8 seconds for intersection 7125
and 11.0 seconds for the remainder), likely due to the generally shorter green durations (smaller circles). These findings sug-
gest that, intersection 7123 could be retimed to provide better coordination with the other intersections to eliminate the
unused green time in the beginning of the green interval.
Similar to the unused green time before the first vehicle arrival, the minimum of the unused green time at the end of the
green interval between the northbound and southbound directions is shown in Fig. 8. Analysis of unused green time after the
last vehicle can help reveal possible time periods when a portion of the green duration could be allocated to another move-
ment that might benefit from additional green time without creating unnecessary delays on the arterial road. In these fig-
ures, it can again be seen that during the off-peak, there are large unused green times. However, these are associated with
very small NGFs and thus can be attributed to lack of demand. On the other hand, during the morning and afternoon peaks,
the unused green time appears to be the smallest and are associated with large NGF values (points towards the bottom of

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Fig. 8 with light-blue color). However, for both intersections 7123 and 7125, there are some cycles with unused green times
after the last vehicle’s arrival during the morning and mid-day period. In some cases, these values are up to 15 seconds and
are associated with larger NGFs. These points indicate that the signal timing during the morning and mid-day at these two
intersections could be adjusted to reduce the unused green time, especially when the demand is higher. Hence, the green
time at intersection 7123 and 7125 for the northbound/southbound through direction could be shortened to reduce unnec-
essary delays from the secondary roads, especially during the middle of the day. This would require further consideration of
traffic conditions on secondary streets to determine whether the secondary roads could benefit from such signal timing
changes.
In general, this process could be automated by creating thresholds depending on the needs of the road and agencies. For
example, cases where NGF exceeds a certain value (noting that the maximum should be near 25 veh/min/green/lane) and the
unused green time also exceeds a certain threshold (e.g., 5 sec) could be flagged to notify traffic engineers of problems that
might exist with the signal timing, either from the coordination perspective or from the green time allocation perspective.
However, the thresholds for what represents poor signal timing might vary across locations based on site-specific features
and overall signal timing performance for each agency.

Concluding remarks

This study combined traffic detection data and signal plan data to evaluate the performance of the signal plan using high-
resolution real-time traffic data. Several green time metrics, including normalized green flow and proportion of phases with
zero flow, were identified to help understand the need for updating the SPaT plan. The metrics developed can help identify
how to reallocate the green time amongst competing phases to improve overall efficiency of the intersection. Furthermore,
metrics to understand the need for retiming of signal timing plans along an arterial were also developed. These metrics
include the unused green time at the beginning and end of green intervals. The unused green time at the beginning of a phase
can be indicative of a need for retiming the offsets along a corridor. On the other hand, the unused green time at the end of a
phase can be indicative of the need to reallocate arterial green time to secondary approaches to avoid unnecessary delays.
These methods can both be used for signal retiming of fixed-time or coordinated signals, or for recalibration of the param-
eters of actuated or adaptive signals (e.g., minimum green time) since they can highlight the phases and times for which
green durations are not used efficiently.
An example application on intersections in Salt Lake City, Utah is conducted. The results show that these metrics can help
improve engineers’ understanding of how well a given signal timing plan is able to serve observed demands and alert engi-
neers if a change needs to be made to the signal phasing and timing (SPaT) plan. In general, large normalized green flows and
low green times can indicate potentially near-saturated or oversaturated movements. Further, unused green times can indi-
cate underutilized phases for which the green time could potentially be shortened to be allocated to other phases. The case
study was able to highlight some potential issues with the signal timing of the intersection considered. For example, some of
the left-turning movements appeared to have large flows with small green times while other movements had low flows with
larger green times. In these scenarios, the traffic engineers could further examine these movements to determine whether
some green time from the through movements could be allocated to the left turning movements.
These metrics can also be used to guide the selection of more efficient signal timing plans. The benefit of these metrics is
that they can be automatically generated so that engineers can be alerted when and where to look for possible retiming
solutions.
The developed algorithms are not computationally expensive and can be easily implemented in real-time to identify
opportunities for improvement on specific intersections. More sophisticated algorithms can be developed using the concepts
introduced in this study, for instance, dashboards with real-time metrics based on historical events with similar conditions.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have
appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

The high-resolution traffic data were provided by the Standing Committee on Traffic Signals from the Transportation
Research Board (AHB25) for the 2019 Big Data Challenge on Signalized Intersections.

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