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Research question: How can the ideal distance headways of a traffic flow be determined?
INTRODUCTION
Considering the vast development in transportation technology in recent history, the
amount of vehicles and other transportation means are more extensive than ever. But this
development also comes with prevailing problems in practice. As a result, traffic has become one
of the main issues for today’s urban life.
The concept of traffic systems has been an issue of interest among many theoreticians, who
consist of people from physicists to mathematicians. The main aims of their studies was to
determine the laws of traffic flow, i.e. the interactions between travelers and the infrastructure,
analyze the fundamental properties of the traffic flow models, designate the main problems in
practice, and reveal the causes of these problems.
But considering the difficulty of conducting a precise real life experiment, these
theoreticians have developed models supported by real life data. The flow in these models bears
some characteristics important for evaluation. Firstly, the flow does not follow a certain sequence
because of the human factor and the its effects, thus the flow is highly random. So the models
produced are only able to make forecasts, but because they depend on practical data, evaluations
on the theories can be considered reliable. When the traffic flow data is processed, it shows
nonlinear characteristics.
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
The main properties of a traffic flow is velocity, density and flow. Velocity(v) is the average
road the vehicles travel in a certain time. The first is time mean velocity, in which velocity is
calculated using fixed reference points in the road. The second is space mean velocity, which
calculates the data from snapshots during the whole road, and is usually considered more accurate.
Density(d) is the number of vehicles per unit roadway. Flow (q) is the number of vehicles that cross
a certain checkpoint in a certain amount of time.
These fundamental properties are utilized in order to establish a basis for any traffic flow
modelling and evaluation. They usually account for the main variables of a model and provide the
quantitative basis for the evaluation of the traffic flow with respect to the model formulated, such
as in Kerner’s Three-Phase Traffic Theory, where Kerner uses the relationship between the density
and velocity in order to designate the congested areas and their propagative behavior (CITE
HERE).
The relationship between these are demonstrated by traffic theoreticians using the
fundamental diagrams of traffic flow. These diagrams include the density-velocity, density-flow,
and flow-velocity graphs. They are derived using empirical traffic data and have been proved
parallel to the many research made on the topic.
First, going through the raw data I gathered from the Department of Transportation of the
UK, I only had the average velocity and the flow rate values accounting for the fundamental
properties of the traffic flow. Because the raw data was split into fifteen minute intervals, I
quadrupled the flow rate in order to negate the discretion in the units of the velocity (km/h) and
flow rate (n/15min). After that, I calculated the average densities for the fifteen minute intervals. I
used the equation q=d.v in the form of q/v=d to calculate the average density. An excerpt from the
data I gathered is below to demonstrate how I underwent the calculation in Table 1.
After the calculation, I determined the fundamental diagram of average density - velocity
diagram, in Diagram 4, in order to later use as I compare the ideal function of density and velocity
and the data.
Time Link Length Average Speed (v) Flow Flow(n/h) Average Density
(km) (km/h) (n/15min) (n/km)
Table 1
Diagram 4
h+l=1/d
where h is the ideal headway distance, l is the vehicle length and d is density.
Diagram 5
After repeating the same procedure for the whole data, I derived Table 2 below.
32 62.5
48 37.03704
64 25
80 17.54386
96 12.98701
112 10
Table 2
From this set of data, I derived the linear best fit line and the corresponding function by
using the least squares technique. The least squares technique may be defined as “a mathematical
procedure for finding the best-fitting curve to a given set of points by minimizing the sum of the
squares of the offsets ("the residuals") of the points from the curve.” To specify, the offsets I used
to calculate the are defined as vertical offsets, demonstrated in Diagram 6, which are
mathematically denoted as yi-f(xi), the difference between the actual y value from the data and
the y value derived from the best fit function. The function is derived from the sums of squares of
the vertical offset (R) values and afterwards calculating the covariance and variance between the
values. Below the least squares fitting technique is explained step by step.
Diagram 6
(I will transform the equations I wrote on excel in the next draft.)
Step 1: First begin by defining the sum of squares of R (1) and the function aimed to be achieved
(2).
(1) (2)
Step 2: In order to determine the best fit data, equalize the derivatives of f(x) according to every
coefficient(3).
(3)
Step 3: After calculating the derivatives, the functions shown in (4) are determined.
(4)
(5)
Step 5: Leaving the coefficients alone by having the inverse matrix of the 2x2 matrix.
(6)
(7)
Step 6: Transform the matrices back into algebraic form (8) in order to determine the sum of
squares (9) and consequently the variance of the coefficients (10).
(8)
(9)
(10)
Step 7:
REFERENCES
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-
phase_traffic_theory#Definitions_.5BJ.5D_and_.5BS.5D_of_the_phases_J_and_S_in_congeste
d_traffic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_flow#History
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-phase_traffic_theory#Criticism_of_the_theory
http://victorknoop.eu/research/papers/chapter_vanwee.pdf
http://www.norbertwiener.umd.edu/Education/m3cdocs/Presentation2.pdf
http://guava.physics.uiuc.edu/~nigel/courses/569/Essays_Fall2012/Files/Park.pdf
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0
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http://www.traffic-simulation.de/uphill.html
http://www.kgm.gov.tr/SiteCollectionDocuments/KGMdocuments/Istatistikler/TrafikveUlasimBilgil
eri/12IlYollariTrafikUlasimBilgileri.pdf