Wireless communication between vehicles and the transportation infrastructure will provide significantly more timely and comprehensive information about arterials and their performance. However, most measures-of-effectiveness were developed based on data available from traditional “point” sensors. The information made available in a connected vehicle environment requires new metrics that can fully utilize the data. This paper identifies several new arterial performance metrics made available in a connected vehicle environment, as well as several existing metrics that can be evaluated more accurately and frequently than before. The new metrics are person-delay, sudden deceleration, change in lateral acceleration, and aggregate regulation compliance. Person-delay measures a vehicle’s lost time multiplied by the number of passengers, and allows for more efficient movement of high-occupancy vehicles and sophisticated transit signal priority. Sudden deceleration and change in lateral acceleration measure activities such as unexpected braking and swerving, which may be leading indicators of unsafe conditions. Aggregate regulation compliance detects unsafe driving behavior that is difficult to collect in the field, such as speeding and illegal U-turns. Engineers can address problem areas through signal timing changes traffic calming, and other measures. The proposed metrics all require high-resolution detection, and are difficult or impossible to measure with existing point detection. For each new metric, its compatibility with connected vehicles is discussed, and required SAE J2735 DSRC Message Set Dictionary data elements are identified.
Transit signal priority in a connected vehicle environment: User throughput and schedule delay optimization approach
