Traffic Signal Timing for Urban Evacuation

Numerous works have considered methods for improving traffic conditions, and hence reducing evacuation time, in a geographic evacuation. The majority of these efforts have focused on traffic flow along freeways, and it appears that there has been no systematic consideration of signal timing in evacuation planning for urban areas. However, traffic signals can have tremendous impact on the movement of urban populations in an evacuation. In this paper, approaches for signal timing to facilitate evacuation and response in the event of a no-advance-notice disaster requiring evacuation in an urban area are investigated using a simulation model constructed with data from Washington, D.C. The trade-offs between evacuation time and average delay are studied in assessing proposed timing plans.