CENG 4351 Traffic Engineering: Operations and Control: Mena Souliman, PH.D

CENG 4351
Traffic Engineering: Operations and

Control
Mena Souliman, Ph.D.

Associate Professor
University of Texas at Tyler
Slide No. 1
CENG 4351
Traffic Engineering: Operations and
Control
Traffic Stream Characteristics

Chapter 5
Slide No. 2
Presentation Outline/Objectives
Types of Facilities
Traffic Stream Parameters
Relationships among Flow Rate, Speed, and Density
Slide No. 3
Introduction
• Traffic streams vary extremely
– Driver behavior
– Vehicle characteristics
• Fortunately, there is a reasonably consistent range of
driver and stream behavior
– Drivers on highway designed for safe speed of 60 mph
may select a broad speed of 45 to 65 mph
 Few will drive at 80 mph
• Purpose:
– Understand the inherent variability traffic
characteristics
–
Slide No. 4
Define normal ranges of behavior
Introduction
• To do so:
– Key parameters must be defined and measured
– Traffic engineers analyze, evaluate, and ultimately plan
improvements to traffic facilities based on:
 Such parameters
 Knowledge of normal ranges of behavior
Slide No. 5
Types of Facilities
• Uninterrupted flow
• Interrupted flow
Slide No. 6
Types of Facilities
• Uninterrupted flow
– No external interruptions to the traffic stream
– Pure uninterrupted flow
 No intersections at grade, traffic signals, STOP or YIELD
signs, or other
– Although pure uninterrupted flow exists only on
freeways, it can also exist on sections of surface
highway, most often in rural areas
 Long distances between fixed interruptions
 More than 2 miles without signals!
Slide No. 7
Types of Facilities
• Interrupted flow
– Incorporate fixed external interruptions
 Traffic signals are major interruptions
> Alternatively starts and stops a given traffic stream, creating a
platoons of vehicles progressing down the facility
 STOP and YIELD signs, unsignalized at-grade
intersections, driveways, curb parking maneuvers
 All urban surface streets and highways are interrupted
flow facilities
Slide No. 8
Traffic Stream Parameters
• Macroscopic parameters
– Volume or rate of flow
– Speed
– Density
• Microscopic parameters
– Speed of individual vehicles
– Headway
– Spacing
Slide No. 9
• Macroscopic parameters : Volume and rate of flow
– Traffic volume: the number of vehicles passing a point on a
highway during a specified time interval
– Units: “vehicles” or “vehicles per unit time”
– Used to:
 Establish trends over time and for general planning purposes
 Detailed design or control decisions based on hourly volumes
for the peak hour(s) of the day
Slide No. 10
– Rate of flow
 Units of “vehicles per hour” but represent flows that exist for
periods of time less than one hour
– A volume of 200 vehicles observed over a 15-minute period
may be expressed as a rate of 200 x 4 = 800 vehicles/hour
– Even though 800 vehicles would not be observed if the full
hour was counted
– The 800 vehicles/hour becomes a rate of flow that exists
for a 15-minute interval
Slide No. 11
– Daily Volumes used to document annual trends in highway
usage
 Average annual daily traffic (AADT).
> The average 24-hour volume at a given location over a full 365-
day year
> The number of vehicles passing a site in a year divided by 365
days (366 days in a leap year)
 Average annual weekday traffic (AAWT).
> The average 24-hour volume occurring on weekdays over a full
365-day year
> The number of vehicles passing a site on weekdays in a year
divided by the number of weekdays (usually 260)
Slide No. 12
– Daily Volumes used to document annual trends in highway
usage
 Average daily traffic (ADT)
> The average 24-hour volume at a given location over a defined
time period less than one year
> To measure an ADT for each month of the year
 Average weekday traffic (AWT)
> The average 24-hour weekday volume at a given location over
a defined time period less than one year
> To measure an AWT for each month of the year
Slide No. 13
Slide No. 14
• Observations:
– ADTs are significantly higher than AWTs in each month.
 This suggests that the facility is serving a recreational or
vacation area, with traffic strongly peaking on weekends
– Also, both AWTs and ADTs are highest during the summer
months
 Suggesting that the facility serves a warm-weather
recreational/vacation area
Slide No. 15
– Peak-hour volumes are sometimes estimated from projections
of the AADT
– Because daily volumes, such as the AADT, are more stable than
hourly volumes, projections can be more confidently made
using them
– AADTs are converted to a peak-hour volume in the peak
direction of flow
– “directional design hour volume” :
Slide No. 16
– For design, the K factor often represents the proportion of AADT
occurring during the 30th peak hour of the year
– If the 365 peak-hour volumes of the year at a given location are listed
in descending order, the 30th peak hour is 30th on the list and
represents a volume that is exceeded in only 29 hour of the year
Slide No. 17
• Consider the case of a rural highway that has a 20-year
forecast of AADT of 30,000 veh/day
– For a rural highway, the K factor ranges from 0.15 to
0.25, and the D factor ranges from 0.65 to 0.80.
– The range of directional design hour volumes,
therefore is:
– Determining appropriate values of K and D for the

facility in question is critical in making such a forecast
Slide No. 18
– Subhourly volumes and rates of flow
 The variation of traffic within a given hour is also of
considerable interest
 The quality of traffic flow is often related to short-term
fluctuations in traffic demand
> A facility may have sufficient capacity to serve the peak-hour
demand, but short-term peaks of flow within the hour may
exceed capacity and create a breakdown
Slide No. 19
 Volumes observed for periods of less than one hour are
generally expressed as equivalent hourly rates of flow
> For example, 1,000 vehicles counted over a 15-minute interval
could be expressed as 1,000 vehs/0.25 = 4,000 veh/h
> The rate of flow of 4,000 veh/h is valid for the 15-minute
period in which the volume of 1,000 vehicles was observed
Slide No. 20
 The full hourly volume is the sum of the four 15-minute
volume observations, or 4,200 veh/h
 The rate of flow for each 15-minute interval is the volume
observed for that interval divided by the 0.25 hours over
which it was observed
 In the worst period of time, 5:30 to 5:45 PM, the rate of flow
is 4,800 veh/h. This is a flow rate, not a volume
 The actual volume for the hour is only 4,200 veh/h.
Slide No. 21
 Table 5.4 compares the demand and capacity for each of the
15-minute intervals
> The queue at the end of each period can be computed as the queue
at the beginning of the period plus the arriving vehicles minus the
departing vehicles
Slide No. 22
 Relationship between the hourly volume and the maximum
rate of flow within the hour is defined by the peak-hour
factor
 For standard 15-minute analysis period, this becomes:
Slide No. 23
– Speed and travel time
 Speed: rate of motion in distance per unit time
 Travel time: time taken to traverse a defined section of
roadway
 Speed and travel time are inversely related:
Slide No. 24
– Speed
> Time mean speed (TMS): average speed of all vehicles
passing a point on a highway over specified time period
> Space mean speed (SMS): average speed of all vehicles
occupying a given section of highway over specified time
period
Slide No. 25
 A vehicle will pass the observer in lane A every 176/88 =
2.0 sec
 Similarly, a vehicle will pass the observer in lane B every
88/44 = 2.0 sec
 Thus, as long as the traffic stream maintains the
conditions shown, for every n vehicles traveling at 88
ft/s (Lane A), the observer will also observe a vehicle
traveling at 44 ft/s (Lane B)
Slide No. 26
 To measure SMS, an observer would need an elevated
location from which the full extent of the section may be
viewed
 Again, however, as long as the traffic stream remains
stable and uniform there will be twice as many vehicles
in lane B as there are in lane A
Slide No. 27
Slide No. 28
– Density and Occupancy
 Density: number of vehicles occupying a given length of
highway or lane, generally expressed as vehicles per
mile or vehicles per mile per lane
> Difficult to measure directly
> Computed from speed and flow rate measurements
> Important measure of quality of traffic flow
Slide No. 29
 Occupancy: the proportion of time that a detector is
“occupied,” or covered, by a vehicle in a defined time
period
 Lv is the average length of a vehicle (ft), and Ld is the
length of the magnetic loop detector
> If “occupancy” over a given detector is “O,” then density may
be computed as:
Slide No. 30
 Detector is generally activated as the front bumper
engages the front boundary of the detector
 Consider a case in which a detector records an
occupancy of 0.200 for a 15-minute analysis period. If
the average length of a vehicle is 28 ft, and the detector
is 3 ft long, what is the density?
Slide No. 31
– Spacing and headway
 Spacing: distance between successive vehicles in a
traffic lane
> The average spacing in a traffic lane can be directly related to
the density of the lane:
Slide No. 32
– Spacing and headway
 Headway: time interval between successive vehicles as
they pass a point along the lane
> The average headway in a lane is directly related to the rate of
flow:
> Average speed can be imperially computed based on headway

and spacing:
Slide No. 33 S= 0.68 da / ha
• A sample problem
– Traffic in a congested multilane highway lane is
observed to have an average spacing of 200 ft and an
average headway of 3.8 s. Estimate the rate of flow,
density, and speed of traffic in this lane
 D x S is not exactly equal to v due to round-off errors

Slide No. 34
Relationships among Flow Rate, Speed, and Density
Slide No. 35
• A flow rate of “0 veh/h” occurs under two very different

conditions
1. When there are no vehicles on the highway, density is “0
veh/mi” and no vehicles can be observed passing a point
 Under this condition, speed is unmeasurable and is referred to as
“free-flow speed”
2. A flow of “0 veh/h” also occurs when there are so many
vehicles on the road that all motion stops
 At a very high density, called the “jam density,” and no flow is
observed because no vehicle can pass a point to be counted when
all vehicles are stopped
Slide No. 36
– The dashed portion of the curves represents unstable or forced

flow
 Represents flow within a queue that has formed behind a
breakdown location
– The solid line portion of the curves represents stable flow (i.e.,
moving traffic streams that can be maintained over a period of
time)
– Except for capacity flow, any flow rate may exist under two
conditions:
> relatively high speed and low density (on the stable portion of
flow relationships)
> relatively low speed and high density (on the unstable portion
of flow relationships)
– Traffic engineers would prefer to keep all facilities
Slide No. 37 operating on the stable side of the curves

CENG 4351 Traffic Engineering: Operations and Control: Mena Souliman, PH.D

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CENG 4351

Traffic Engineering: Operations and

Mena Souliman, Ph.D.

Traffic Stream Characteristics

Traffic Stream Parameters

Relationships among Flow Rate, Speed, and Density

– Determining appropriate values of K and D for the

 For standard 15-minute analysis period, this becomes:

> Average speed can be imperially computed based on headway

 D x S is not exactly equal to v due to round-off errors

• A flow rate of “0 veh/h” occurs under two very different

– The dashed portion of the curves represents unstable or forced

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