CE 426 | Transportation Engineering Lecture 3

Transportation Capacity Analysis

 CE 426 | Transportation Engineering

Objectives
1. Define capacity and level of service
2. Describe the relationships between flow, density and speed in a traffic
stream.
3. Apply the principles of traffic flow in an engineering problem.
4. Use Greenshields’ or Greenberg’s Models to estimate flow and density.
5. Analyze capacity for signalized intersections
6. Identify three types of signal control.
7. Define and estimate cycle length and pedestrian timing.
8. Estimate capacity of transport facility
9. Estimate capacity of pedestrian facilities
 CE 426 | Transportation Engineering

Capacity
• Maximum number of vehicles, passengers, or the like, per unit time at
which persons or vehicles can traverse a point or uniform section of
lane or roadway during a given time period under prevailing roadway,
traffic, and control conditions.
• Volume (v) = demand
• Capacity (c) = supply
• Highway
• Under capacity v/c < 0.85
• Near capacity v/c=0.85-0.95
• At capacity v/c = 0.95-1
• Over capacity v/c > 1
 CE 426 | Transportation Engineering

Highway Capacity

• Categories of Highway facilities

• Uninterrupted flow facilities
• No external controls
• Interrupted flow facilities
• Interrupted by various controls
 CE 426 | Transportation Engineering

Level of Service (LOS)

• Used to qualitatively measure the operating
conditions within a traffic system.
• LOS varies from A(best) to F(worst).
• LOS analysis helps to:
• Identify the existing or planned operation of a pedestrian
or traffic facility
• Helps determine if improvements or other system
measures are needed.
• See Table 4.1 pp. 141
CE 426 | Transportation Engineering

1 2

3 4
 CE 426 | Transportation Engineering

Flow
• Equivalent hourly rate at which vehicles pass a point on a
highway during a time period less than one hour.
• Expressed as the number of vehicles counted at the
point of observation divided by the total observation
time.
• For freeways, the observation time is usually 15 minutes
 CE 426 | Transportation Engineering

Flow

• Flow equation
where:
!"##×% n = number of vehicles observed
q= T = observation period, seconds
& q = equivalent hourly flow, vehicles per hour (vph)

• Example
• If 100 vehicles were observed in 15 minutes, the flow would be: ?
 CE 426 | Transportation Engineering

Flow Example
A count was made near a fast food restaurant in the north-
bound (NB) direction for 10 minutes at around 7:00 AM. The
result is as follows:
• 168 total vehicles including 55 trucks

• What is the NB flow rate?

• What is the percent truck traffic?

Does the truck percentage seem high to you?

What is the likely result if the count was made at 7:00 PM?
 CE 426 | Transportation Engineering

Volume
• Number of vehicles that pass a point on a highway during a period of
60 consecutive minutes and is expressed in terms of vehicle per hour.
• Represents the actual vehicle count
• Can be manually or automatically counted

• Traffic count = number of vehicle that pass a point

• Vehicle classification = vehicles broken down according to classes
• Turning movement count = number of vehicle on a specific movement

Why might vehicle classification be useful to a traffic engineer?

Why might turning movement count be useful to a traffic engineer?
 CE 426 | Transportation Engineering

“60 consecutive minutes”

Volume Calculation
Obs Period Count Volume, vph
7:00-7:15 100
7:15-7:30 125
7:30-7:45 150
7:45-8:00 150 525 for 7:00-8:00
8:00-8:15 200 625
8:15-8:30 250 750
8:30-8:45 200 800 peak
8:45-9:00 100 750
 CE 426 | Transportation Engineering

Peak Hour Factor, PHF

• Measure of variability • From Previous Example

of demand during the
peak hour

'() -##
PHF= PHF= *×./#
=0.8
*×)+,

where: The peak hour factor may be used in signal timing

PHV = Peak Hour Volume design to compensate for the possibility of more
V15 = volume during peak vehicles arriving during the peak 15 min. than the peak
15 min within peak period hour
 CE 426 | Transportation Engineering

Traffic Flow Exercise

The following table shows 5-minute vehicle counts that have been recorded for a given transportation facility
during the a.m. peak hour:
Time Count
8:00 am - 8:05 am 212
8:05 am - 8:10 am 208
• Calculate peak hour factor (PHF) 8:10 am - 8:15 am 223
8:15 am - 8:20 am 232
8:20 am - 8:25 am 241
8:25 am - 8:30 am 220
8:30 am - 8:35 am 205
8:35 am - 8:40 am 201
8:40 am - 8:45 am 185
8:45 am - 8:50 am 230
8:50 am - 8:55 am 197
8:55 am - 9:00 am 185
 CE 426 | Transportation Engineering

Headway
Time Headway, 1 ̅ Space Headway, d
- Difference in time between - Distance between the front of
the arrival of a (leading)vehicle and a vehicle and the front of the
the next (following) vehicle measured next vehicle.
at an observation point.

1 1
1̅ = ̅
6=
5 7

where:
k = density or concentration
 CE 426 | Transportation Engineering

Time Space Diagram

• Used for signal progression

Retrieved from "http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:DavidLevinson"

What type of information can you obtain from a time-space diagram?

 CE 426 | Transportation Engineering

Time Mean Speed

• Arithmetic average of the spot speeds or speeds taken at a
single point of a highway
• Spot speed

∑%9<= 89 where:
8: = 89 = speed of ith vehicle
>
n = number of observed vehicle
8: = time mean speed
Example:
u1 = 35, u2 = 30, u3 =40, u4 = 35 mph, 8: = ??
 CE 426 | Transportation Engineering

Space Mean Speed

• Harmonic means of the speeds of vehicles passing a point
on a highway during an interval of time
• Average travel time it takes for the observed vehicles to
traverse a length of the roadway
• Measure of how long a vehicle occupies a space in a
highway

>×@ where:
8? = n = number of observed vehicles
∑%9<= 19 D = length of a section of a highway
ti = time it takes for a vehicle i to cross a section D
ū s = space mean speed
 CE 426 | Transportation Engineering

X-X Y-Y
Example
250 ft

A speed trap consisting of a record of times when vehicles passed two points X-X and
Y-Y was made and the results are as follows. Assume that the trap distance is 250 ft.
Veh Arrival at X-X Arrival at Y-Y Trap Time Speed
1 3 11.5
2 5.2 13.1
3 8.2 15.2
4 12.1 18.1

• Determine the space mean speed and the time mean speed. Is TMS higher than SMS? Why?
• Plot the time-space diagram
 CE 426 | Transportation Engineering

Density, k
• Number of vehicles traveling over a unit length of highway
at an instant in time
• Concentration
• k = N/L
where, N = number of vehicles, L = segment length in miles