The fixed cycle traffic light problem: a note on a paper by Mcneil

Both paper and author (D. R. McNeil, (1968)) will be referred to below as DRM. The said paper deals with the following situation: an intersection is controlled by a traffic light with a fixed cycle time, T; the possibility of other delays, e.g., due to turning vehicles, is ignored; arrivals at the light form a compound Poisson process; if vehicles arrive to find the light green and the queue empty they are not delayed, while in the contrary case they depart when they reach the head of the queue, providing the light is green, each vehicle taking a constant time to move off. The length of the effective red period is R. For further details and discussion, DRM may be consulted.