Traffic Operations and Management

The research described in this paper employed simulation modeling and empirical observations in an effort to: (1) Identify the traffic flow phenomena that characterize freeway weaving section capacity; and (2) determine appropriate traffic flow rate values that reflect weaving section capacity. The INTRAS microscopic simulation model was calibrated and validated using empirical data collected at a weaving site. Increasing traffic demands were then sequentially input into repeated simulation runs to identify the boundary between uncongested and congested operation. Where a weaving...

This report presents a project whose purpose was to calibrate a freeway simulation model to emulate traffic operating conditions on the Borman Expressway. The computer simulation model can then be used to predict impacts created by a host of possible conditions including incident occurrences, maintenance, reconstruction and the deployment of various freeway control and management strategies. The results of the simulation model can be used as a decision-making tool for adopting suitable policies to address operating needs.

Stochastic queueing methods are often applied to highway systems to estimate performance characteristics such as delay and queue length.

Recent research in advanced traffic management systems has emphasized incident detection and response to mitigate nonrecurring congestion. Existing incident response decision-making algorithms do not account for the expected losses associated with false alarms, undetected incidents, and delayed incident response. A freeway incident response decision-making system based on sequential hypothesis testing techniques is presented. The primary feature of this decision-making system is that it minimizes the sum of the expected losses associated with false response, nonresponse, and delayed...