Develop Annual Arterial Congestion Report

Starting from 1993, Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) annually prepares a Metro Freeway System Congestion Report to document congested segments of the freeway system. However, a similar congestion report for the arterial system has not been developed, mainly due to lack of ability for automatic traffic signal data collection and performance measurement. In this project, based on the archived high-resolution traffic data from four major arterials equipped with the SMART-Signal system in the metro area, i.e., Trunk Highway 13, Trunk Highway 55, Trunk Highway 7 and Trunk Highway 10, the authors developed an innovative approach to generate an arterial traffic congestion report for the MnDOT Metro District. Results show that the main approaches of the four signalized corridors operate very efficiently during AM and PM peaks, but larger delays happen at side streets in general.