TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2011//
TI  - Critical intersection signal optimization during urban evacuation utilizing dynamic programming
JO  - Journal of transportation safety and security
A1  - Parr, Scott A.
A1  - Kaisar, Evangelos
SP  - 59
EP  - 76
VL  - 3
IS  - 1
N2  - Despite advancements in the field of traffic planning and operations, many major cities still rely on pretimed signal settings. With only pretimed signal control strategies, the secondary effects of a terror attack are magnified by slow evacuation times resulting in further loss of life. However, the cost of implementing new infrastructure based solely on the chance of a no-notice evacuation is not something that city planners are willing to do. The purpose of the research is to define a cost-effective methodology to develop pretimed signal control strategies to assist evacuations in urban areas. To that end, a dynamic programming methodology was developed to assist critical intersections in urban corridors. To test this methodology, a microscopic traffic-simulation environment was created for a case study of a 10 intersection evacuation corridor in Washington, DC. Using the proposed methodology to optimizing signal splits of a critical intersection within an evacuation corridor, evacuation clearance time was reduced by approximately 1 h. Furthermore, this formulation can be used to develop pretimed signal control settings for evacuation scenarios. Results showed that peak-hour signal timings are not sufficient in the case of an emergency, and signal timing plans must be tailored for emergency evacuation.<p /> 
LA  - 
SN  - 1943-9962
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19439962.2011.532297
ID  - ref1
ER  -