Recent Advances in Traffic Engineering

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Frontmatter

2. Advances in Traffic Engineering

   1. Frontmatter

   2. Traffic Flow Modelling for Congested Urban Road Links of Ahmedabad City

      A. A. Amaliyar, B. S. Patel, H. R. Varia

      Abstract

      Knowledge of fundamental traffic flow characteristics and vehicle behaviour are necessary for appropriate operation of system. In developing countries like India, the urban road traffic, in particular, is highly heterogeneous. It comprises of vehicles of widely varying static and dynamic characteristics. Heterogeneous traffic flow creates enormous delay, wastage of fuel, air and noise pollution, accidents and interruption to emergency vehicles. The fundamental parameters of road traffic flow are speed, flow and density. If these parameters are measured properly on congested urban road links, then mathematical models can be developed. These models are basic need for quantifying capacity and consequently determining level of service of the road. Models for the free flow conditions are available for the congested Indian urban roads, but very few attempts have been made for developing model for the forced flow conditions. It is difficult to capture stop-and-go condition for developing the speed–flow relationship from the field observations. Hence, this study aimed to develop an appropriate methodology to collect the data for the stop-and-go condition particularly. The congested road links of Kalupur area of Ahmedabad city have been selected, where heterogeneous traffic is flowing creating enormous delay about more the one hour in the evening peak period. The data is collected by videography and then analysed for small time interval of 20–30 s. The speed–flow–density curves are plotted for free flow as well as for forced flow conditions, and different equations are obtained.

   3. Evaluation of Capacity and Level of Service for Selected Urban Arterial Roads—A Case Study of Rajkot City

      Mohammad Rahim Rahimi, Monicaba Vala, Bindiya N. Patel

      Abstract

      Rapid increase of transportation demand in urban roads causes delay, congestion, raise in vehicle operating cost, and safety and environmental problems. In this research, effort is made to evaluate capacity and level of service in divided and undivided mid-block sections of urban roads in peak and off-peak hours of the day. Speed and traffic volume data were collected by a video record method for 12 h. As the traffic in Indian cities is heterogeneous and has various static and dynamic characteristics, it needs to be converted into homogeneous traffic, so that we can evaluate capacity and level of service; therefore, it has been done by three methods, homogenization coefficient, PCU value as per IRC, and Chandra’s method, and the result with the capacity and level of service is compared. Various speed–flow, flow–density, and speed–density relationships were made based on field data. Speed–density relationship was developed by Greenshield, Greenberg, and Underwood models, and the R² values were more fitted into the Underwood’s model; hence, the capacity was estimated based on this model. The level of service was analyzed by DPCU/C and PCU/C for the morning and evening peak hours, and the observed level of service of the most peak hour periods of the road sections was obtained C, D, and E. Also, friction model has been developed by SPSS software, in which the input variables were BIC, V/C ratio, PSV, PEDC, and PEDSW and the output variable was the speed. It was observed that friction has a substantial effect on the speed of vehicles.

   4. Estimation of Equivalency Units of Vehicle Types for Road Geometry

      N. Sai Kumar, V. M. Naidu, C. S. R. K. Prasad

      Abstract

      Capacity plays an important role while planning and designing of any roadway. The features of geometric of a roadway like the grade and curve radius will govern the capacity of a roadway. Passenger car unit (PCU) is used to estimate the capacity of the roadway. The passenger car unit values of a vehicle type alter concerning to speed. The speed of the vehicle is governed by geometric features of a roadway. This work objective is to learn the effect of geometric of the roadway such as grade, curve, and straight sections on PCU values of heterogeneous traffic conditions on a two-way four-lane national highway. Geometric and traffic data collected at 7 sections on NH-16. PCU value’s estimation of the vehicle types of mixed traffic is difficult as compared with the homogeneous traffic conditions. PCU values are estimated by using speed–area ratio (dynamic PCU) method. Dynamic PCU (speed–area ratio) approach considers the vehicle average speed. The outputs had revealed that the capacity of the roadway declines as the percentage of downgrade increases. With an increase in the percentage of upgrade, the capacity of the road increases. The capacity of the roadway increased at the quick curve in contrast with mild curve and straight roads.

   5. Capacity Estimation of Indian Multilane Highway by Calibrating Driver’s Behavior Parameters

      Tanumoy Ghosh, Sudip Kumar Roy, Subhamay Gangopadhyay

      Abstract

      The heterogeneous traffic conditions with non-lane-based traffic flow can be best evaluated by simulation of traffic. The present study uses VISSIM to simulate the mixed traffic of Indian multilane highways as it is a time increment-based multimodal simulation software. The psycho-physical behavior of drivers is considered in the present study because the driver performs an action when a threshold is reached to its boundary and is expressed as the function of speed differences and distances between the vehicles. The calibration by several dimensions is done on car-following model that has been modified by Wiedemann in VISSIM. The driver of a vehicle in VISSIM considers the leading vehicles and vehicles on adjoining lanes. Thus, hysteresis plots of relative speed against relative distance are made for aggregated leader and follower vehicles based on follower vehicular category to get the calibrated coefficient of correlation parameters (CC) used in VISSIM. A new simulation model with calibrated CC parameters is made to get a more realistic capacity estimate of multilane highway in Indian conditions.

   6. Performance Enhancement of an Un-signalized Intersection Under Heterogeneous Traffic Conditions Using Microscopic Simulation: A Case Study of Bhumkar Chowk Intersection

      Pankaj More, Ashish Methekar, Kasturi Kesarkar, Monali Nerkar, Shantanu Karhadkar, Siddharth Gaikwad

      Abstract

      The emergence of IT parks in Pune city has led to an increase in the flow of traffic during peak hours at Bhumkar Chowk, which is a four-legged un-signalized intersection with a vehicular underpass. This paper attempts to enhance the performance of Bhumkar Chowk intersection which is a typical example of a heterogeneous traffic scenario seen in India. The work is also carried out to resolve the traffic congestion by reducing the travel time, queue length, delay and traffic volume. Signals are designed for the intersection as well as new vehicular underpass adjacent to the current underpass is proposed.

   7. The Evaluation of Traffic Congestion Analysis for the Srinagar City Under Mixed Traffic Conditions

      Adinarayana Badveeti, Mohammad Shafi Mir, Kasinayana Badweeti

      Abstract

      On urban roads in India, there has been a rapid increase in Motor vehicles (MV) and also an increase in a large number of non-motorized road users since last few decades on urban roads in Srinagar metropolitan area (SMA) under heterogeneous traffic conditions. Traffic congestion in the city will cause a large number of problems. The current situation of traffic jam condition on urban-transport networks are very high and that occurs as use rapidly growing and is distinguished by longer trip times, smaller speeds, and fast-growing vehicular queuing. The present methodology aims to study traffic congestion indicators such as level of service (LOS) of roadway, Travel Time Index (TTI), and their variants. The data were collected at different locations in the CBD area of the city where high traffic congestion flows were observed. At these selected locations, vehicular volume count, spot speeds (m/s) were observed during peak and non-peak hours. Motor vehicles were categorized based on different vehicle groups. The final results obtained from the calibration and validation of models were discussed and the obtained level of service comes under F. It was concluded that Rainawari was found to have the major traffic congestion different in peak hours and the concerned authorities like Srinagar Development Authority (SDA) should take proper remedial measures to control traffic congestion issues on the road link between NIT Srinagar and Dal gate especially Rainawari area.

   8. User Perception of Automobile Level of Service: Tracking Traffic with GPS Enabled Mobile Phones

      Drisya Manghat, Krishnamurthy Karuppanagounder

      Abstract

      The Highway Capacity Manual 2010 (HCM 2010) specifies the importance of user perception in evaluating the Automobile Level of Service (ALOS). Hence, the objective of this study is set to develop a unified methodology for quantifying the ALOS on the divided urban corridors, based on the automobile user perception. To study the behaviour of automobiles at different flow conditions, speed profiles of test vehicles were collected with the in-vehicle Global Positioning System (GPS) enabled mobile phones. The ‘Speed Tracker’ application was used to record the travel data in every second along with the location coordinates. To have a wide variety of travel conditions, four divided urban corridors of length varying from 2.9 to 3.8 km were identified in the state of Kerala as the study stretches. The segmental analysis was carried out for studying the speed variation behaviour of the vehicles with corresponding flow values. The Acceleration Noise (AN) and the speed ratio (SR) were found to be the most significant measures for defining ALOS. Non-linear regression analysis was carried out to model these measures of effectiveness. k-means and fuzzy c-means (FCM) clustering algorithms were used to obtain the threshold values for ALOS. Silhouette coefficients were calculated for validating the cluster results, and the results showed that k-means algorithm is giving better results compared to FCM. This method can be used for assessing the quality of four-lane divided urban corridors incorporating the user perception.

   9. Travel Time Delay Study on Congested Urban Road Links of Ahmedabad City

      N. I. Prajapati, A. K. Sutariya, H. R. Varia

      Abstract

      Highly increasing vehicle population results in transportation problems, and thus it leads to the requirement of more efficient transportation systems. Indian urban road traffic consists of different types of vehicles with different sizes, speed, and maneuverability moving on the same right of way without lane discipline and without obeying general traffic rules. They create chaos on junctions and result in enormous delays, more fuel consumption, air and noise pollution, accidents, and also restrict the movement of emergency vehicles. Therefore, it is necessary to quantify the travel time delay in existing traffic conditions. The aim of this study is to quantify the delay in travel time and to identify its causes. As per that the various traffic surveys have been carried out on selected stretches of Kalupur region in Ahmedabad. In this study, it is proposed to measure the travel time delay and to ascertain the notable factors which result in these delays. License plate method and GPS in floating car method are used to collect travel time data during peak hours in the morning and evening, respectively. With the help of the data collected, Flow–Delay model is generated. Average travel time observed in this area is about 15–20 min/km during evening peak hours. It is found that the travel time delay depends on traffic flow, its composition, slow-moving vehicles, haphazard movement of vehicle without lane discipline, boarding alighting of passengers on the bus stops, and rickshaw stops. It is suggested to provide an efficient mass transport system at separate levels in this area.

   10. Development of Red Light Violation Detection System for Heterogeneous Traffic

       Jinal Jariwala, Rajesh Gujar

       Abstract

       In India, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways registers 480,652 road accidents in 2016 and it was 501,423 in 2015. Red Light Running is one of the major causes recorded at the signalized intersection for road accidents. Surat is one of the fastest-growing cities in India with a population of 6.04 million in 2016. The population of the city is increasing day by day as numbers of people are migrating. To reduce RLR and to improve traffic safety and security, Red Light Violation Detection (RLVD) system is introduced under the Intelligent Traffic Control System (ITCS).To detect the violating vehicle, Red Light Violation Detection Application (RLVA) software is completely designed and developed. This system is different from the traditional traffic signal system, in which a Smart camera with high capacity is placed to cover the area over which vehicles are restricted to passed. The main purpose of this research is to check the effectiveness of camera enforcement system at the signalized intersection for heterogeneous traffic.

   11. Comparative Analysis of Saturation Flow Using Various PCU Estimation Methods

       Satyajit Mondal, Vijay Kumar Arya, Ankit Gupta

       Abstract

       The magnitude and nature of traffic flow in developing countries are difficult to evaluate due to its mix traffic conditions. In transportation network, intersection plays a vital role to increase the efficiency of the entire road network. Analysis of these nodal points (intersection) is required to evaluate the performance of the intersection through the assessment of operational parameters such as saturation flow and its level of service (LOS). However, the complexity of discharge flow in Indian scenario is mainly due to its mixed properties of traffic stream where both motorized and non-motorized vehicles are traveling in the same stretch without any lane discipline. Also, no single vehicle dominates the traffic stream consequently prediction of saturation flow is more sensitive to that mixed traffic. The passenger car unit is a common platform for the conversion of mixed traffic into a standard unit by taking passenger car as a conventional vehicle. The present study focuses toward the analysis saturation flow at signalized intersection using various PCU estimation methods under mixed traffic conditions. A detailed comparison of the saturation flow obtained by the each methodology with standard saturation flow value given in HCM (2010) is also presented. Traffic and vehicular data were collected from six signalized intersections from three Indian cities such as Delhi, Chandigarh and Allahabad using video graphic method. The prospective method resulted in a lower difference in saturation flow respect to HCM (2010) is proposed for non-lane-based mixed traffic stream.

   12. Empirical Travel Time Reliability Assessment of Indian Urban Roads

       Rushikesh Amrutsamanvar, Gaurang Joshi, Shriniwas S. Arkatkar, Ravi Sekhar Chalumuri

       Abstract

       This chapter focuses on the performance evaluation of Indian urban roads from the perspective of travel time reliability. Travel time data on two important road corridors of Surat city were collected using a license plate matching technique for this purpose, and the performance of these corridors was assessed using and various travel time reliability metrics. Statistical models were developed to identify the functional relationship between space mean speed (SMS) and planning time index (PTI). As Indian traffic comprises of multiple vehicle classes, an attempt was made to analyze the effect of vehicle composition on the average travel time using artificial neural network (ANN)-based approach. It was observed that travelers must consider the higher cushion time while planning a trip on both of these corridors. The developed regression models demonstrated the strong functional relationship between SMS and PTI on both of the sections. Developed ANN models revealed that the percentage of car and auto-rickshaws present in the traffic stream significantly affects the average travel time along with the total volume of traffic.

   13. Fuzzy Rule-Based Travel Time Estimation Modelling: A Case Study of Surat City Traffic Corridor

       Krishna Saw, Bhimaji K. Katti, Gaurang J. Joshi

       Abstract

       Traffic and transport planning in fast-growing metropolitan cities in India is the most challenging task for the urban transport planner, in view of the faster traffic and transport demand growth observed recently. Increase in travel times and their variation are significant issues on urban corridors owing to heavy traffic volume and congestion. The level of service is decreasing, and vehicular delays are intolerable during peak periods. The situations call for in-depth analysis of associated attributes. An important traffic corridor of Surat, a fast-growing metropolitan city in the state of Gujarat in India, is selected for studying the attributes and developing the estimation model as a typical case of urban corridor. The attributes associated with travel time are uncertain and imprecise in nature due to the dynamic traffic environment. Therefore, a soft technique fuzzy rule-based approach has been advocated for developing the travel time estimation model. Estimation model is further validated with field data, and sensitivity analysis with respect to identified attributes has been carried out.

   14. Calibration of SUMO for Indian Heterogeneous Traffic Conditions

       Yadavilli Sashank, Nitin A. Navali, Arjuna Bhanuprakash, B. Anil Kumar, Lelitha Vanajakshi

       Abstract

       Efficient modelling of vehicular traffic is a challenging task in the context of Indian traffic conditions. One of the approaches for modelling traffic is using simulation. Though there are several traffic simulation software available, all of them are developed for the lane based and homogeneous traffic conditions. However, traffic conditions in many countries are heterogeneous and lane-less and for simulating such traffic, either specific software needs to be developed or calibration of existing software for such traffic conditions is required. For example, one of the commonly used software, namely VISSIM can be calibrated for such traffic conditions and is already reported in literature. However, VISSIM being licensed software, researchers have developed an open source software, namely Simulation of Urban MObility (SUMO). Though the initial development of SUMO focused on homogeneous and lane disciplined traffic, later researchers started developing modules for the Indian traffic with its wide mix of vehicle types and improper lane discipline. This paper presents a methodology for the calibration of SUMO for Indian heterogeneous traffic conditions by calibrating its parameters. Data from a 2 km segment in Chennai was used for the calibration. In the first level, parameters that can affect the driving behaviour under such conditions were identified using sensitivity analysis and one-way ANOVA test. Then optimal combination of parameters were identified using Genetic Algorithm (GA). Performance comparison was done with calibrated VISSIM for the same test bed. Average speed obtained from both the simulation software (VISSIM and SUMO) were compared and the errors were calculated in terms of Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) with respect to actual speed values. Results were found to be comparable, indicating that SUMO can be calibrated for simulating Indian traffic.

   15. Data Collection in Countries with Extreme Vehicle Heterogeneity and Weak Lane Disciplined Traffic

       Bhupali Dutta, Vinod Vasudevan

       Abstract

       Understanding driver behavior is extremely important for the design and analysis of any transportation infrastructure. Several methodologies exist to collect information on driver behavior. However, most of these apply to homogeneous traffic with lane discipline. In India, like in most of the low- and middle-income countries, the traffic is highly heterogeneous and exhibits poor lane discipline. In this case, the vehicles interact not only longitudinally, but also laterally. Hence, these traditional methodologies may not work in such a scenario. The objective of this paper is to present a data collection method which will help to collect information about individual vehicles in highly heterogeneous traffic with poor lane discipline. Instrumented vehicles help to observe individual driver behavior accurately and precisely. Although such vehicles are present in various universities in the USA (such as University of Michigan, Southampton, Texas A&M University, to name a few), their purpose of such vehicles is different. However, the major challenges are associated with data processing and extraction. Since these sensors give large data, its processing is not easy, and it offers challenges. This paper discusses the opportunity such a vehicle offers to understand driving conditions and the challenges the researchers might face. This paper also presents some simple applications of the data.

   16. Simulation of Classified Lane-Wise Vehicle Count at Toll Plazas Using Monte Carlo Simulation and Probability-Based Discrete Random Number Generation

       V. B. Soorya, T. M. Rahul, Shriniwas S. Arkatkar

       Abstract

       The simulation-based prediction of traffic conditions based on current and past traffic observations is an important component in the intelligent transportation system (ITS) applications. Infrastructure, in the form of toll plazas, is inevitable for collection of revenue after the development of National Highways in India. Intelligent transportation systems utilize the advanced technologies and employ them in the field of transportation. The implementation of advanced traffic management systems (ATMS) at toll plazas will improve the toll plaza operations. A simulation model can help in the evaluation and optimization of toll operations of existing toll plazas as well as in the planning and design of similar systems. With this motivation, a lane-wise classified vehicle count prediction algorithm, which can simulate traffic conditions at any time interval, has been developed in this study based on Monte Carlo simulation (MCS). Vehicle arrival was modeled by assuming Poisson’s distribution, followed by classification. Lane selection was done using the probability-based discrete random number generation. Radio-frequency identification (RFID)-based electronic toll collection (ETC) system gives timely varying traffic counts observed at the toll plaza, which has been utilized to develop and validate the simulation model. The flexibility with respect to the probabilities of the proposed algorithm makes it more applicable in the area of ITS. The observed vehicle count for each lane has been compared with the simulated values. The results of statistical tests show that there is no significant difference between actual and simulated traffic for each lane.

   17. Performance Evaluation of Urban Roadway Links Using V-Box

       G. Yadav, A. Dhamaniya

       Abstract

       Present study attempts to evaluate the operational efficiency of urban roadway links using V-Box. An urban arterial of 5.8 km length in Surat city of Gujarat is selected and divided into six links based on the number of intersections in the entire facility. All links are identical in geometry (six-lane divided) with different land use patterns. In order to evaluate the operational efficiency of these links, the number of runs of different categories of vehicles including motorized two-wheelers (2W), auto-rickshaw (3W), big car and small car (4W) and heavy vehicle (bus) has been taken at different time periods. A number of 30 runs of each vehicle category were taken on the entire facility for peak hours and non-peak hours. The collected data has been analysed for spatial and temporal variation in speed for different vehicle categories. The spatial variation has been checked by analysing the inter-segmental variation of speed. Also, within each segment, the variation of speed for different category of vehicles for peak and non-peak hours has been studied. Further, cumulative speed plots have been plotted to check the variability of speed for different segments for different vehicle categories. Furthermore, the excess speed over posted speed limit for different mid-block sections has also been checked.