Roads/Highways

Traffic Management System Performance Using Regression Analysis

Levinson, David
Chen, Wei
2006

This study can be viewed as a preliminary exploration of using regression analysis to evaluate long-run traffic management system performance. Four main traffic management systemsin the Twin Cities metro area --- Ramp Metering System, Variable Message Signs (VMS), Highway Helper Program, and High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) System were evaluated based on multiple regression models. Link speed and incident rate were employed as the response variable separately. Consequently, regression analysis can be a simple and effective research method for testing the macroscopic association between traffic...

Some Observed Queue Discharge Features at a Freeway Bottleneck Downstream of a Merge

Bertini, Robert L.
Cassidy, Michael J.
2002

Details of traffic evolution were studied upstream and downstream of a freeway bottleneck located near a busy on-ramp. It is shown that on certain days the bottleneck became active upon dissipation of a queue emanating from somewhere further downstream. On such occasions, the bottleneck occurred at a fixed location, approximately one kilometer downstream of the merge. Notably, even after the dissipation of a downstream queue, the discharge flows in the active bottleneck were nearly constant, since the cumulative counts never deviated much from a linear trend. The average bottleneck...

Complications at Off-Ramps

Cassidy, Michael
2002

You're driving along the freeway when suddenly everything slows down. A crash? A sudden overload of cars joining the freeway from on-ramps up ahead? Maybe. Sometimes the cause never reveals itself to you—inexplicably, everything just starts moving again. If this happens everyday in the same spot, you may develop a theory or two as to why it happens. Would it occur to you that the congestion might be caused not by too many cars getting on the freeway but b ytoo many cars trying to...

Testing Daganzo's Behavioral Theory for Multi-lane Freeway Traffic

Chung, Koohong
Cassidy, Michael
2002

This report describes the detailed, albeit still preliminary study of traffic on stretches of two different freeways. Both were plagued by merge bottlenecks. The first of these sites is the Gardiner Expressway, a 3.3 km long freeway stretch in Toronto, Canada. The site was selected because of its suitable geometry (i.e. its merge bottleneck) and its well-tuned loop detectors located upstream and downstream of the bottleneck. The site thus provided for an exceptionally good “laboratory” for testing Daganzo’s behavior theory of drivers (Daganzo, 1999). It turns out that the observations from...

Assessment of the Applicability of Cooperative Vehicle-Highway Automation Systems to Bus Transit and Intermodal Freight: Case Study Feasibility Analyses in the Metropolitan Chicago Region

Shladover, Steven E.
Miller, Mark A.
Yin, Yafeng
Balvanyos, Tunde
Bernheim, Lauren
Fishman, Stefanie R.
Amirouche, Farid
Mahmudi, Khurran T.
Gonzalez-Mohino, Pedro
Solomon, Joseph
Rawling, Gerald
Iris, Ariel
Bozic, Claire
2004

This report presents the results of its performance assessment of the feasibility of applying cooperative vehicle-highway automation systems (CVHAS) to bus transit and freight movements in the metropolitan Chicago area. Cooperative vehicle-highway automation systems are systems that provide driving control assistance or fully automated driving and are based on information about the vehicle's driving environment that can be received by communication from other vehicles or from the infrastructure, as well as from their own on-board sensors.

Health of California’s Loop Detector System

Rajagopal, Ram
Varaiya, Pravin
2007

The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) freeway sensor network has two components: the sensor system of 25,000 inductive loop sensors grouped into 8,000 vehicle detector stations (VDS) and covering 30,500 freeway direction-miles; and the communication network over which the sensor measurements are transported to Caltrans Traffic Management Centers. The sensor network is virtually the only source of data for use in traffic operations, performance measurement, planning and traveler information. However, the value of these data is greatly reduced by the poor reliability of the...

Freeway On-Ramp Metering, Delay Savings, and Diverge Bottleneck

Cassidy, Michael J.
2003

An effort was made to clarify certain issues concerning freeway onramp metering and its potential for saving commuter delay. Simple analogies were used to show that delay is reduced if ramp metering increases the rates at which commuters exit the freeway. Contrary to what is frequently reported in the literature, higher travel speeds and flows on links within a freeway system are not evidence of diminished delay and this too was made clear by the analogies. The discussion explains why a metering scheme should be specially tailored to the freeway it serves, and why no single metering logic...

Validation of Daganzo's Behavioral Theory of Multi-Lane Traffic Flow: Final Report

Banks, James H.
Amin, Mohammad R.
Cassidy, Michael J.
Chung, Koohong
2003

A study was conducted to verify C. F. Daganzo's behavioral theory of multi-lane traffic flow (1, 2). This study was conducted by teams from San Diego State University and the University of California at Berkeley who worked independently on a series of case studies to test predictions derived from the theory. The results of the study suggest that some of the phenomena predicted by Daganzo do occur, but not at all locations, and that the underlying behavioral assumptions are oversimplified. Specifically, the types of flow- density (or flow-occupancy) relationship assumed by Daganzo were...

Stationary Models of Unqueued Freeway Traffic and Some Effects of Freeway Geometry

Cassidy, Michael J.
Anani, Shadi B.
2003

Occupancies and flows were jointly sampled from numerous freeway segments in nearly stationary, unqueued traffic. The data from one segment were typically averaged across all lanes there and plotted. Each plot was compared with one sampled at a neighboring freeway segment, with the two segments differing only in their number of travel lanes. Such comparisons were repeated for a total of five pairs of segments on five freeways in and near Toronto, Canada and in California. All occupancy-flow relations were piece-wise linear in form for average flows up to about 2,000 vehicles per hour per...

Test of Theory of Driver Behavior on Homogeneous Freeways

Chung, Koohong
Cassidy, Michael J.
2004

A theory that can explain even some of the more puzzling aspects of freeway traffic flow is tested here. Some of the observations furnished to this end pertain to dynamic features of traffic that have not been previously verified with data. These include findings that (a) freeway traffic can enter a semicongested state marked by a fast-moving queue in the passing lane with unqueued flow in the shoulder lane; (b) the possible devolution of traffic to a fully congested state when vehicle speeds in the passing lane drop below those in the shoulder lane supports the contention that freeway...