CE327, Spring 2015.

Instructor: Mahdieh Allahviranloo

Sample Problems:

Q1:
The following figure shows the location and topology of a section of the road.

D1 D2

The average occupancy measured from two sets of detectors are as following:
Occupancy of detector 1: 0.2
Occupancy of detector 2: 0.4
The length of the vehicles is 15 ft and the width of the detector is 5 ft.
The flow-density relationship for the freeway has been determined to follow the “triangular flow
relationship” shown in the following figure.

Flow - Density Relationship

2000

1800

1600

k j =150 veh/mi/lane
1400
Flow (vehicles/hour/lane)

1200

1000

S f = 60 mph
800

600

400

200

0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 160
kc Density (veh/mi/lane) k jam

a) Due to inconsistency in the road capacity for different sections, find the shockwave speed for this
section of the freeway?

1
CE327, Spring 2015.
Instructor: Mahdieh Allahviranloo

Solution step:
1- Find the density based on the occupancys in each section of the road.

5280 ⋅ Occupancy
k (vpm) =
( L + LD )
5280 ⋅ Occupancy
=
(15 + 5)

5280 ⋅ Occupancy
k1 =
( L + LD )
5280 ⋅ 0.2
= = 52.8
(15 + 5)

2- Plot Fundamental diagram for each section, remember to multiply the diagram to number of the
lanes of each section.
3- Find the correspnding values of the flow rate at each section using density computed in step 1 and
plots.
4- Compute shockwave density.

b) In 10 minutes, how far the shockwave will move?

Q2: compute Space mean Speed and Time mean speed for the stream of vehicles with the speeds shown
in the tables:

Vehicle Speed
1 50
2 43
3 67
4 56
5 23
6 47
7 60

Q3: If the relationship between speed and density is given by the following equations, find the maximum
flow rate when jam density is 300 v/mile, free flow speed is 70 mph and C=0.3*(free flow speed).

2
CE327, Spring 2015.
Instructor: Mahdieh Allahviranloo
𝐾𝐾𝑗𝑗
𝑢𝑢 = 𝐶𝐶. 𝑙𝑙𝑙𝑙( )
𝐾𝐾

Q4: Probability of one car’s arrival in every second to the intersection is p and the probability of ‘no
arrival’ in each second is (1-p). Assuming that the traffic is uncongested and probability of arrival for
different vehicles are independent events. If P =0.2
a) What is the probability of arrival of 3 cars in 5 seconds?
b) If we are recording the arrival time of the vehicles, starting from time 00:00 What is the
probability that the first vehicle arrives in 4th second?

Q5: Arrival time to an intersection, under uncongested conditions has Poisson distribution where the
average flow rate is 1600 mph.
a) What is the probability of exactly 10 vehicle arrivals in 30 seconds?
b) What is the probability that the headway between two consecutive arrivals exceeds 10 seconds?
c) What is the average number of vehicles arriving to the intersection in one minute?
d) What is the average headway between every two consecutive arrival?

Q6: what M/M/1 queue stands for? In a gas station, the arrival has Poisson distribution with the rate of 1
vehicles per 5 second. There are 10 gas dispensers in the stations, assuming service has an exponential
distribution. The average service time is 1.1 minute per vehicle.
a) Is this system a stable queue or not?
𝜆𝜆
b) If the goal of the station owner is to keep r (𝑟𝑟 = ) smaller than 0.8, how many additional
𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐
dispensers need to be installed in the station?
c) Compute the average waiting time for every driver in the queue (for r = 0.85 and r= 1.1).
d) Compute the average # customers waiting in a queue (for r = 0.85 and r= 1.1).