Elective II

Traffic Engineering and Management

Ch 1: Traffic Stream Characteristics
• The traffic stream is a combination of driver and vehicle behavior

• The traffic stream parameters provide information regarding the

nature of traffic flow, which helps in detecting any variation in flow
characteristics.

• traffic behavior requires a thorough knowledge of traffic stream

parameters and their relationships
Traffic stream parameters
• traffic stream is non-uniform in nature

• flow of traffic through a street of defined characteristics will vary both

by location and time corresponding to the changes in the human
behavior.

• traffic stream has some parameters on which the characteristics can

be predicted.
Traffic stream parameters
• Macroscopic: flow, density, speed

• Microscopic: time/space headway

Speed
• Definition
• Spot speed
• Running speed
• Journey speed
• TMS and SMS
Numerical

• Find TMS and SMS

Relation between TMS and SMS
Numerical
• Find TMS and SMS and verify the relationship. Also compute the
density.
Flow
• Definition
• Variation
• Types
• AADT
• ADT
• AAWT
• AWT
Density
Derived characteristics
• Headway (time headway)

• Spacing (space headway)

Spacing and Headway

spacing

headway
Spacing and Headway
What are the individual headways and the average headway measured at location
A during the 25 sec period?

A
Spacing and Headway
What are the individual headways and the average headway measured at location
A during the 25 sec period?

Time of Location (ft)

A Passing (sec) 600 700
1 0.0 2.0
h1-2
2 4.4 6.7
3 6.0 8.0 h2-3

Vehicle
4 11.4 14.3
5 15.0 17.5
6 17.5 20.0
7 21.1 23.3
8 23.3 25.0
Clearance (c) and Gap (g)
• Front bumper to back bumper distance and time

Clearance (ft) or Gap (sec)

Lavg
g avg  havg 
vavg Spacing (ft) or headway (sec)

cavg  g avg * vavg

 Uninterrupted traffic flow model

C
Spacing D

Normal Flow

Forced Flow
A
Congestion Capacity
Veh/hr
 V=A-BK
Mean Speed ,v A>0,B>0
A
B

Density, k
 V  A  Bk
Where
V—mean speed of vehicles
k—average density of vehicles
A,B—empirically determined parameters

Because the flow of an uninterrupted traffic stream is the product of the density
and the speed,

q  kV  Ak  Bk 2

(V  A)V A V2
q  kV   V
B B B
 Mean Speed ,v

Mean Speed ,v
A A
B B
C
C
D
Density, k D Flow, q

C
Flow,q

A D
Density, k
• Greenshield Model
Calibration of Greenshield’s model
 Greenberg's logarithmic model

• as density tends to zero, speed tends to infinity

• inability of the model to predict the speeds at lower densities
 Underwood exponential model

• speed becomes zero when density reaches infinity

• cannot be used for predicting speeds at high densities

Vf is free flow speed

K0 is optimum density
 Pipes‘ generalized model

• When n is set to one, Pipe’s model resembles Greenshield’s model

 Multiregime models

• human behavior will be different at different densities.

• speed-density relation will also be different in different zones of

densities.