A Signal Timing Optimization Model for the Intersection with the Island Work Zone

Work zones widely exist on city arterials of many countries, while the studies on the urban work zones are very limited. This paper focuses on a specific type of work zone that is located within the area of the intersection, namely the island work zone. The existence of the island work zone changes the saturation flow rate, traffic delay, traffic wave and the emptying time of the intersection, which further influence the signal timing of the intersection. Therefore, this paper attempts to propose a novel signal timing model for the intersection with the island work zone. By improving the FVD car-following model, the paper proposes a saturation flow rate model for the intersection with island work zone, and then the propagation process of the traffic wave under the influence of the work zone is analyzed. Furthermore, the signal timing optimization model for such a type of intersection is proposed and a real case is used to evaluate the proposed model. The results show that the proposed signal timing optimization model can reduce about 17% of queue length and traffic delay of the intersection with the island work zone than the existing signal timing method.