Integrated Pressure-Based Extensions with Trajectory-Aware Actuated Control: Enhancing Operations, Safety, and User Expectancy

Pressure-based traffic signal control and actuation-based traffic signal control have some desirable properties such as decentralized control, the capability to make continuous decisions, the ability to address changes in demand, and overall intuitiveness. However, the phase gap-out method in actuated control often leads to unused green time, while pressure-based control does not conform to the NEMA ring-barrier structure. Considering the benefits of both methods, this study proposes an integrated control approach where the phase gap-out logic in actuated control is replaced with a pressure-based extension method. This control strategy uses vehicle trajectory data and incorporates two definitions of pressure: one based on the number of vehicles and the other using estimated time of arrival–weighted pressure. The control methods are further enhanced by several objective-driven strategies: dilemma zone (DZ) protection to reduce rear-end crashes, queue clearance (QC) to improve user expectancy, and secondary extension (SE) to improve progression along the arterial. The proposed methods are compared against two conventional control strategies (fully actuated control and coordinated-actuated control) and three trajectory-based actuated control methods. Simulations were conducted on an arterial network under both moderate and near-saturated volume scenarios. Results suggest that under moderate conditions, the pressure-based control methods outperformed conventional controls, while the integration of QC was necessary to improve performance in near-saturated conditions, whereas DZ protection and the SE method achieved the objectives of safer phase termination and smoother flow. These results demonstrate the potential of integrating pressure-based logic with actuated control for safer and more efficient signal operations.