A method, system and computer program product are provided for detecting vehicle queue events and managing traffic flow. A computing system recognizes whether a queue event occurred for each vehicle located in an area of interest based on collected vehicle data. The area of interest includes an intersection, and the vehicle data for the each vehicle includes location information and speed information. The location information further includes a distance to an intersection. The computing system identifies differences in queue length among queues in the area of interest based on the vehicle data and determines queue indicators for each of the queues in the area of interest. Based on queue indicators for each of the queues in in the area of interest generated over multiple sampling periods, traffic signal lights at the intersection in the area of interest are managed.