CE 6006 – TRAFFIC ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT

UNIT I

TRAFFIC PLANNING AND CHARACTERISTICS

Road characteristics - Road user characteristics - PIEV theory - Vehicle performance

characteristics - Fundamentals of traffic flow - Urban traffic problems in India - Integrated
planning of town, country, regional and all urban infrastructure - Towards sustainable
approach - Land use and transport and modal integration.

TRAFFIC STREAM PARAMETERS

The traffic stream includes a combination of driver and vehicle behavior. The driver
or human behavior being non-uniform, traffic stream is also non-uniform in nature. It is
influenced not only by the individual characteristics of both vehicle and human but also by
the way a group of such units interacts with each other. Thus a flow of traffic through a street
of defined characteristics will vary both by location and time corresponding to the changes in
the human behavior. The traffic engineer, but for the purpose of planning and design,
assumes that these changes are within certain ranges which can be predicted. For example, if
the maximum permissible speed of a highway is 60 kmph, the whole traffic stream can be
assumed to move on an average speed of 40 kmph rather than 100 or 20 kmph. Thus the
traffic stream itself is having some parameters on which the characteristics can be predicted.
The parameters can be mainly classified as : measurements of quantity, which includes
density and flow of traffic and measurements of quality which includes speed. The traffic
stream parameters can be macroscopic which characterizes the traffic as a whole or
microscopic which studies the behavior of individual vehicle in the stream with respect to
each other. As far as the macroscopic characteristics are concerned, they can be grouped as
measurement of quantity or quality as described above, i.e. flow, density, and speed. While
the microscopic characteristics include the measures of separation, i.e. the headway or
separation between vehicles which can be either time or space headway. The fundamental
stream characteristics are speed, flow, and density and are discussed below.
Speed

Speed is considered as a quality measurement of travel as the drivers and passengers

will be concerned more about the speed of the journey than the design aspects of the traffic. It
is defined as the rate of motion in distance per unit of time.

Mathematically speed or velocity v is given by, v = d/t, where, v is the speed of the
vehicle in m/s, d is distance traveled in m in time t seconds.

Speed of different vehicles will vary with respect to time and space. To represent
these variation, several types of speed can be defined. Important among them are spot speed,
running speed, journey speed, time mean speed and space mean speed. These are discussed
below.

Spot Speed

Spot speed is the instantaneous speed of a vehicle at a specified location. Spot speed
can be used to design the geometry of road like horizontal and vertical curves, super elevation
etc. Location and size of signs, design of signals, safe speed, and speed zone determination,
require the spot speed data. Accident analysis, road maintenance, and congestion are the
modern fields of traffic engineer, which uses spot speed data as the basic input. Spot speed
can be measured using an enoscope, pressure contact tubes or direct timing procedure or
radar speedometer or by time-lapse photographic methods. It can be determined by speeds
extracted from video images by recording the distance travelling by all vehicles between a
particular pair of frames.

Running Speed

Running speed is the average speed maintained over a particular course while the
vehicle is moving and is found by dividing the length of the course by the time duration the
vehicle was in motion. i.e. this speed doesn’t consider the time during which the vehicle is
brought to a stop, or has to wait till it has a clear road ahead. The running speed will always
be more than or equal to the journey speed, as delays are not considered in calculating the
running speed.
Journey Speed

Journey speed is the effective speed of the vehicle on a journey between two points
and is the distance between the two points divided by the total time taken for the vehicle to
complete the journey including any stopped time. If the journey speed is less than running
speed, it indicates that the journey follows a stop-go condition with enforced acceleration and
deceleration. The spot speed here may vary from zero to some maximum in excess of the
running speed. A uniformity between journey and running speeds denotes comfortable travel
conditions. 1.3.4 Time mean speed and space mean speed Time mean speed is defined as the
average speed of all the vehicles passing a point on a highway over some specified time
period. Space mean speed is defined as the average speed of all the vehicles occupying a
given section of a highway over some specified time period. Both mean speeds will always
be different from each other except in the unlikely event that all vehicles are traveling at the
same speed. Time mean speed is a point measurement while space mean speed is a measure
relating to length of highway or lane, i.e. the mean speed of vehicles over a period of time at
a point in space is time mean speed and the mean speed over a space at a given instant is the
space mean speed.

Flow

There are practically two ways of counting the number of vehicles on a road. One is
flow or volume, which is defined as the number of vehicles that pass a point on a highway or
a given lane or direction of a highway during a specific time interval. The measurement is
carried out by counting the number of vehicles, nt, passing a particular point in one lane in a
defined period t. Then the flow q expressed in vehicles/hour is given by q = nt/t

Flow is expressed in planning and design field taking a day as the measurement of
time.

Variations of Volume

The variation of volume with time, i.e. month to month, day to day, hour to hour and
within a hour is also as important as volume calculation. Volume variations can also be
observed from season to season. Volume will be above average in a pleasant motoring month
of summer, but will be more pronounced in rural than in urban area. But this is the most
consistent of all the variations and affects the traffic stream characteristics the least.
Weekdays, Saturdays and Sundays will also face difference in pattern. But comparing day
with day, patterns for routes of a similar nature often show a marked similarity, which is
useful in enabling predictions to be made. The most significant variation is from hour to hour.
The peak hour observed during mornings and evenings of weekdays, which is usually 8 to 10
per cent of total daily flow or 2 to 3 times the average hourly volume. These trips are mainly
the work trips, which are relatively stable with time and more or less constant from day to
day.

Types of volume measurements

Since there is considerable variation in the volume of traffic, several types of

measurements of volume are commonly adopted which will average these variations into a
single volume count to be used in many design purposes.

1. Average Annual Daily Traffic (AADT) : The average 24-hour traffic volume at a
given location over a full 365-day year, i.e. the total number of vehicles passing the site in a
year divided by 365.

2. Average Annual Weekday Traffic (AAWT) : The average 24-hour traffic volume
occurring on weekdays over a full year. It is computed by dividing the total weekday traffic
volume for the year by 260.

3. Average Daily Traffic (ADT) : An average 24-hour traffic volume at a given

location for some period of time less than a year. It may be measured for six months, a
season, a month, a week, or as little as two days. An ADT is a valid number only for the
period over which it was measured.

4. Average Weekday Traffic(AWT) : An average 24-hour traffic volume occurring on

weekdays for some period of time less than one year, such as for a month or a season.

The relationship between AAWT and AWT is analogous to that between AADT and
ADT. Volume in general is measured using different ways like manual counting,
detector/sensor counting, moving-car observer method, etc. Mainly the volume study
establishes the importance of a particular route with respect to the other routes, the
distribution of traffic on road, and the fluctuations in flow. All which eventually determines
the design of a highway and the related facilities. Thus, volume is treated as the most
important of all the parameters of traffic stream.
Density

Density is defined as the number of vehicles occupying a given length of highway or

lane and is generally expressed as vehicles per km. One can photograph a length of road x,
count the number of vehicles, nx, in one lane of the road at that point of time and derive the
density k as, k = nx/x.

Density is also equally important as flow but from a different angle as it is the
measure most directly related to traffic demand. Again it measures the proximity of vehicles
in the stream which in turn affects the freedom to maneuver and comfortable driving.

Derived characteristics

From the fundamental traffic flow characteristics like flow, density, and speed, a few
other parameters of traffic flow can be derived. Significant among them are the time
headway, distance headway and travel time. They are discussed one by one below

Time headway

The microscopic character related to volume is the time headway or simply headway.
Time headway is defined as the time difference between any two successive vehicles when
they cross a given point. Practically, it involves the measurement of time between the passage
of one rear bumper and the next past a given point.

Distance headway

Another related parameter is the distance headway. It is defined as the distance

between corresponding points of two successive vehicles at any given time. It involves the
measurement from a photograph, the distance from rear bumper of lead vehicle to rear
bumper of following vehicle at a point of time. The average distance headway is the inverse
of density and is sometimes called as spacing.

Travel time

Travel time is defined as the time taken to complete a journey. As the speed increases,
travel time required to reach the destination also decreases and vice-versa. Thus travel time is
inversely proportional to the speed. However, in practice, the speed of a vehicle fluctuates
over time and the travel time represents an average measure.
Fundamental relations of traffic flow

The relationship between the fundamental variables of traffic flow, namely speed,
volume, and density is called the fundamental relations of traffic flow. This can be derived by
a simple concept. Let there be a road with length v km, and assume all the vehicles are
moving with v km/hr. Let the number of vehicles counted by an observer at A for one hour be
n1. By definition, the number of vehicles counted in one hour is flow(q). Therefore, n1 = q.
Similarly, by definition, density is the number of vehicles in unit distance. Therefore number
of vehicles n2 in a road stretch of distance v1 will be density × distance. Therefore, n2 = k ×
v.

Since all the vehicles have speed v, the number of vehicles counted in 1 hour and the
number of vehicles in the stretch of distance v will also be same.(ie n1 = n2).

Therefore, q = k × v. This is the fundamental equation of traffic flow. Please note

that, v in the above equation refers to the space mean speed will also be same.

Fundamental diagrams of traffic flow

The relation between flow and density, density and speed, speed and flow, can be
represented with the help of some curves. They are referred to as the fundamental diagrams
of traffic flow. They will be explained in detail one by one below.

Flow-density curve

The flow and density varies with time and location. The relation between the density and the
corresponding flow on a given stretch of road is referred to as one of the fundamental
diagram of traffic flow. Some characteristics of an ideal flow-density relationship is listed
below:

1. When the density is zero, flow will also be zero,since there is no vehicles on the road.
2. When the number of vehicles gradually increases the density as well as flow
increases.
3. When more and more vehicles are added, it reaches a situation where vehicles can’t
move. This is referred to as the jam density or the maximum density. At jam density,
flow will be zero because the vehicles are not moving.
4. There will be some density between zero density and jam density, when the flow is
maximum. The relationship is normally represented by a parabolic curve
 The point O refers to the case with zero density and zero flow. The point B refers to
the maximum flow and the corresponding density is kmax. The point C refers to the
maximum density kjam and the corresponding flow is zero. OA is the tangent drawn to the
parabola at O, and the slope of the line OA gives the mean free flow speed, ie the speed with
which a vehicle can travel when there is no flow. It can also be noted that points D and E
correspond to same flow but has two different densities. Further, the slope of the line OD
gives the mean speed at density k1 and slope of the line OE will give mean speed at density
k2. Clearly the speed at density k1 will be higher since there are less number of vehicles on
the road.

Speed-density diagram

Similar to the flow-density relationship, speed will be maximum, referred to as the

free flow speed, and when the density is maximum, the speed will be zero. The most simple
assumption is that this variation of speed with density is linear. Corresponding to the zero
density, vehicles will be flowing with their desire speed, or free flow speed. When the density
is jam density, the speed of the vehicles becomes zero.
Speed-flow relation

The relationship between the speed and flow can be postulated as follows. The flow is
zero either because there are no vehicles or there are too many vehicles so that they cannot
move. At maximum flow, the speed will be in between zero and free flow speed. The
maximum flow qmax occurs at speed u. It is possible to have two different speeds for a given
flow.