Arterial Performance Evaluation on an Adaptive Traffic Signal Control System

This paper documents the evaluation of Sydney Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System (SCATS) at a major signalized arterial in Las Vegas. The evaluation was based on various performance measures, including primarily travel times and stops at selected routes along the arterial. Extensive travel time runs were conducted during the weekday and weekend peak periods. Arterial performance was compared between SCATS and conventional time-of-day (TOD) coordination plans. Based on the data and analysis results, a general conclusion was reached that no significant improvement on arterial progression was achieved with SCATS under normal traffic conditions. However, this conclusion was made based on a major limitation of using video detection in the field, which may have significantly limited SCATS from achieving its best performance.