Team: Yuet Man Kan (CE), Tanat Vanichpipat (CE), Evan Christianson (CE), Pei-Wen Hu (CE), Eindra Aung (CE), Sushmitha Sree Gumireddy (CE), Cong Luo (CE)

Advisor: Alexander Skabardonis (CE)

Commuters everywhere experience frustration and delays due to traffic congestion. Dense urban areas such as San Francisco create the largest problems. The general solution is to expand infrastructure but this is expensive, time-consuming, and politically complicated. Instead, our team will reduce delays by optimizing traffic signal sequences with sophisticated simulations of the street traffic conditions. With better traffic control we can provide an inexpensive and easily implemented relief to commuters.

Problem:

• Unreliable bus service with over 56,000 daily transit commuters on Geary Street

Solution:

• Transit signal progression optimized signal split and offsets in timing plan to create the “green wave”
• Transit signal priority modifies signal timing by holding “green” longer of shortening “red”

Early Green:

• Provides a green phase earlier than programmed to clear an intersection approach with a waiting transit bus sooner
• Easiest to implement on long blocks or on transit ways with predictable travel times

Green Extension:

• Provides extra time of a green phase for a detached transit vehicle to clear an intersection
• Most applicable when transit bus at the back of the queue, as is common at the 1st signal after a far-side stop