The myth of traffic-responsive signal control: Why common sense does not always make sense

•Comparison of performance of anticipatory versus traffic-responsive signal control.•Anticipatory control outperforms traffic-responsive control.•The first mover advantage and externalities make anticipatory control superior.

Intuitively, one is inclined to think that traffic-responsive signal control is the most efficient control policy. In this paper, however, we show that for an intersection of two routes connecting one origin–destination pair where only one route is subject to congestion, anticipatory signal control performs better than traffic-responsive signal control. Furthermore, the unfolded logic behind this result suggests that the superiority of anticipatory signal control also extends to other networks.