Traffic Facilities

Uninterrupted-flow Facilities: No external factors such as Traffic signals, STOP or YIELD signs,
uncontrolled access, etc. to cause periodic interruptions to the traffic stream. Such facilities
include freeways and other limited access roads, long sections of rural highways between
signalized intersections, etc.
Interrupted-flow Facilities: Traffic flow is periodically interrupted by external devices like traffic
signals, STOP or YIELD signs. Such facilities do not offer continuous movement and time enters
as a significant parameter affecting flow. Constant stopping and restarting of traffic streams
occur on such facilities and traffic movements occur in platoons.
Traffic Stream Parameters
Three macroscopic parameters include Speed, Traffic Volume/Flow and Density. Two
microscopic parameters include time headway and space headway.
Speed
Time Mean Speed (Spot speed): Average speed at one point/location over a period of time. It is
the arithmetic mean of the speeds observed at a point.
Space Mean Speed: Average speed of vehicles over a certain road length at any time. It is the
harmonic mean of speeds observed at a point.
Space mean speed <= Time mean speed. It is possible to calculate time mean speed from a set
of observations of space mean speed data. Similarly, it is possible to calculate space mean speed
from a set of observations of time mean speed data.
Running Speed: Average speed maintained by a vehicle over a given length while the vehicle is
in motion. It excludes stopped delay time
Journey speed: Effective speed of a vehicle between two points including all delays incurred enroute
Traffic volume / Flow
Traffic volume is expressed as vehicle/h or vehicle/day.
Daily Volumes are used in Highway planning, and expressed in two ways:
Average Daily Traffic (ADT): Considers day to day variation of traffic (say, within a week)
Annual Average Daily Traffic (AADT): Considers seasonal variation of daily traffic within a
year
Hourly Volumes are used in capacity analysis, and reflect hourly variation of traffic within a day
For control measures, safety and capacity sometimes Directional Design Hourly Volume
(DDHV) is calculated.

Variation within a given hour is also of considerable interest because a facility may have the
capacity adequate to serve the peak hour demand, but short term peaks of flow within the peak
hour may exceed the capacity.
Density
Number of vehicle occupying a unit length of roadway at a given instant, usually expressed as
vehicles per km. Difficult to measure directly, and can be computed from speed and volume
Jam density is the highest density occurs when the vehicles are standstill i.e. in jam condition. In
this case traffic volume approaches to zero
Headways
Space headway (s) is the distance between fronts of successive vehicles in meters. Time
headway (h) is the time interval between the passages of the fronts of successive vehicles at a
specified point. It is measured in seconds. Time headway and Space headway are related to each
other.
Characteristics of Uninterrupted flow
Speed, flow and density on an uninterrupted flow facility are related as follows:
Flow= Speed x Density
Several analysts have attempted to fit relationships to observed data of speed and density.
Greenshields model is the most popularly used linear relationship. Graphical representations of
Greenshields model showing the relationship between speed-flow, flow-density and speeddensity are shown below. Greenbergs model assumes logarithmic relation, while Underwoods
model assumes exponential relationship.
As per Greenshields model, speed at capacity is 50% of the free flow speed, and density at
capacity is 50% of the jam density. While Greenbergs model breaks down at low concentration
(i.e. concentration equals to zero), Underwoods model does not represent zero speed at high
concentration.

Characteristics of Interrupted flow

In a traffic signal, traffic is periodically stopped and then permitted to proceed to maximize
efficiency and safety through sharing of time for different conflicting movements. The constant
headway achieved with a stable moving queue, is called the Saturation Headway (h, sec/veh).
After green signal is shown, first few vehicles consume more time than h because of drivers
reaction time to green signal. If incremental headways (above h) are added for first few
vehicles then a single value is obtained which is called as Start-up lost time. Time between last
vehicle from one approach entering the intersection and the initiation of the green signal for
conflicting movements is called as clearance lost time. Start-up lost time and Clearance lost time
together is called as Total lost time.
The number of vehicles that could enter the intersection in a single lane if the signal were always
green for that lane and vehicles were never stopped is called as Saturation flow rate.