Individual users’ perception of signalised intersections

Knowledge of the users‟ perception of signalised intersections is important to increase the acceptance of a system. A good traffic light controller not only optimizes its control to the objectives of the road authorities, but also takes the user acceptance into account. A low acceptance might result in red light or speed violations and route alterations. The perceived waiting time (PWT) is an indicator for the users‟ perception. The PWT is a measurement of how long car drivers experience their waiting time at a traffic light. Besides the actual waiting time, other factors (e.g. the number of stops or green waves) influence the PWT. Knowing the PWT in the design process is necessary to increase the user acceptance of the final system. Therefore it is necessary to evaluate the PWT a priori of implementing a system. This evaluation can be performed using simulation studies. The main objective of this study is to find a model that describes the PWT of car drivers. A literature review resulted in ten factors with various levels of influence on the waiting time perception at signalised intersections. The most important factors are the actual waiting time, the number of stops in the queue, the unused green time of conflicting traffic and green waves between adjacent intersections.