Comparison of Delays from HCM, Synchro, PASSER II, PASSER IV and CORSIM for an Urban Arterial

This study compared control delays computed by HCM (using HCS software), Synchro, PASSER II, PASSER IV, and CORSIM for an urban arterial. Base and optimized conditions were studied. In the base condition, the existing signal settings and traffic volumes were modeled in HCS and Synchro under three scenarios: actuated-coordinated, actuated-uncoordinated and pre-timed traffic controller. For the base condition, delays from HCM shouldn't be directly compared to Synchro unless the precautions discussed in this report are taken. For pre-timed and actuated signals when simultaneous phases exist and one terminates ahead of the others, the results of HCM and Synchro are not comparable. For pre-timed and actuated signals where the phases terminate simultaneously, the condition analyzed won't be comparable unless the precautions are taken. Once these precautions were taken, control delays from Synchro and HCM were not significantly different for only pre-timed uncoordinated signals. For actuated-uncoordinated and for actuated-coordinated, the software are modeling different conditions. For the optimized condition, the software optimized signal settings for actuated coordinated signal controllers and calculated the delays. The delays for optimized conditions from PASSER II and PASSER IV were not significantly different than the delays for the base conditions. However, the delays from Synchro for optimized conditions were significantly lower than the delays for the base conditions. CORSIM was used to verify whether the optimized signal settings would produce lower delay if implemented in the field. The results indicated that delays for optimized conditions would not be significantly lower than the delays for the base conditions, and the lower delays given by Synchro for the optimized conditions could not be verified.