Analysis of Traffic Light in the

Provo/Orem Area
Introduction
The most important goal of a traffic engineer is safety for all users of the roadway. Roads are
used by people walking, biking, driving a motorcycle, driving their car and sometimes steering
large freight vehicles. Roadway systems are designed to host a large portion of the local
population every day. Whether it be a rural landscape or streets shadowed by buildings, safety
is the traffic engineers greatest responsibility.
After safety, the next priority for engineers is to get the users from points A to B in as
short of time as possible. In this busy world, the last thing people want to be slowing them down
is traffic. Delay does not just affect individuals on a micro level, but it even affects the economy.
Freight vehicles play a large role in the American economy and drivers rely on quick and
efficient roadways. How quickly can a driver carrying produce get from California to Colorado?
How long does the average driver have to wait at a certain intersection? How far backed up is
traffic on Interstate 15? How much time does a driver lose at each intersection? These
questions, as well as many more, tell the story of traffic delay.
We will begin this study with a detailed look at the purpose and goals that are hoped to
be accomplished by the end. This will be followed by a section specifying the process that was
laid out to collect the data needed. Then there will be a segment giving descriptions on the four
intersections used. The results section will be next showing the method of analysis. The
conclusion will follow where the final remarks will be made. The bibliography section will list
sources that are referenced. The appendix will have additional graphs and images of the data.

Purpose
One statistic that is used in calculating total delay is Fraction of Vehicles Stopping
(Roess 221). Fraction of Vehicles Stopping (FVS) is a very simple statistic and very
interpretable. It is measured by beginning at a consistent point in the signal cycle, and counting
the number of vehicles that pass through the intersection in the chosen lane. Then when the
red phase is active, count the number of vehicles that make a complete stop. For each cycle,
divide the number of stopped vehicles over the number of vehicles that went through that

intersection (including the stopped vehicles). This will give a value where is the cycle number
for direction (direction meaning 1 direction of 8 sampled) and is the proportion of stopped
vehicles.

Process
The question being asked was whether there was a significant difference between the
FVS of one intersection being compared to a nearby homogenous counterpart. The first thing to
consider was what would be the best way to compare multiple intersections and how many
intersections should be included. As mentioned the purpose of using FVS is for simplicity and it
is easily interpretable. For this reason we chose to use Bayesian methods to estimate the
distributions for each direction at the four intersections. The greatest strength this method
provides is that the results could be interpreted easily. We will address the details of Bayesian
inference in the Results section.
The next item that had to be addressed was how many intersections would be collected
from and which ones. The matter of how many was dependent on time. Where time and
money were endless, a complete census could be run on all events of interest. If money were
not an issue then one purchase and install the equipment to monitor all intersections at all times
of the day. If time were endless then an observer could gather an enormous sample size of
every intersection. But a large element of this study is to attain as much information possible
with little resources. With all this said, it was decided that four homogenous intersections would
be suitable.
Which four intersections should be used? As has been mentioned many times before,
these intersections had to have very similar characteristics. But finding perfect correlation in
traits would be very difficult. There had to be a threshold for how similar they must be. For this
reason intersections on major roads were considered in the Provo and Orem metropolitan area.
Segments where construction was occurring were omitted. Time of the day was decided to be
2pm 4pm for all data collection on Tuesday through Thursdays. Weather conditions had to be
dry roads and clear visibility. The direction of the traffic being measured would be the major
traffic. Two roads were selected because of their importance for moving around the
Provo/Orem area. Those roads were University Avenue and University Parkway. All viable
intersections were put into a vector and four intersections were randomly chosen. The four
being 900 South & University Avenue, Provo, UT; 200 North & University Avenue, Provo, UT;
University Parkway & 800 East, Orem, UT; University Parkway & Main Street, Orem, UT.

The following step was to go collect data for each major traffic direction. This required
the observer to position themselves in a place where they can see the entire length of the queue
as well as how many cars are going through the intersection in the lane being measured. The
lane chosen was one of the dedicated through lanes either on the outside or inside. Whichever
was chosen was consistent for that intersection the remainder of the study. As was discussed
earlier, the observer counts the number of vehicles that stop in one cycle and the number of
vehicles that go through the intersection in that same cycle.
Something that was not foreseen in planning the study, but was noticed after data
collection and before analysis, was that there was a significant difference between the two
directions at some of the intersections. The reader will see this later on but using University
Parkway & 800 East in Orem as an example, traffic going up the hill was stopped more often
than not. Whereas the traffic going east (down the hill) was stopped a lot sometimes but mostly
were able to continue without stopping.

Results
Using a stratified sample analysis we found that the overall mean of the data was 44.2%,
meaning that 44.2% of the cars needed to stop at the surveyed light. Our 95% confidence
interval was between 41.5% and 47.1%.
To better understand our data, we used Bayesian analysis. Bayesian inference uses the
combination of prior knowledge and data to create a new knowledge about the random
variable(s) in question. In this case we would like to know the proportion of vehicles that must
stop at the selected traffic signals. Ironically we treat as a success where represents a
stopped vehicle at for cycle and direction . As an example lets say that 10 vehicles stop of the
30 vehicles that went through the intersection for cycle 1 at a random intersection. There were
10 successes and 30 10 = 20 failures. By summing these values for all of the cycles one
would get the number of successes and failures for the direction being tested. These summed
values are used in estimating what is called the posterior distribution. This distribution can then
be used to determine the probability of future successes and failures. The posterior distribution
can be updated with more data to give more confident estimates.
Using this method we found that there was a significant difference between the two
direction at each light. This seems to suggest that the lights are optimized for one direction. We
found that the light at University and 8th (red seen in plot below) was particularly poorly timed.
We hypothesize that this may be because this light is on the boundary of Provo and Orem, and
the two cities do not coordinate. This is a potential area for more research.

Conclusion
If we were to do this study again we would have been more consistent with the time of
day we collected data. We also would prefer to have seven other observers so that we could do
all of the directions at the same time of day simultaneously. It would also be beneficial to have a
large sample size of at least one direction to test how the variability changes as the sample size
increases. That would assist in determining if the sample size for the other directions is enough.
However, one of the purposes is to do a study with limited resources such as time and money.
It is a question of what is the delay given small sample sizes and one observer? If done again
we would just do two intersections then test the relationship between FVS and total control
delay as was discussed. That would demand the same amount of time but I would then begin to
discover if FVS could be used to quickly estimate delay.