Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society
Volume 2015, Article ID 184049, 8 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/184049
Analysis of Traffic Conditions in Urban Region Based on Data from Fixed Detectors
College of Transportation, Jilin University, Changchun 130022, China
Received 2 June 2015; Revised 10 August 2015; Accepted 11 August 2015
Academic Editor: Lawrence P. Horwitz
Copyright © 2015 Shidong Liang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
To evaluate traffic conditions in an urban region, the average travel speed in the street network and the average traffic flow per lane are selected as indexes. The results for identifying traffic conditions are obtained using macroscopic fundamental diagram. Because of the difficulty of collecting the traffic parameter of travel speed from widely distributed fixed detectors directly, in this paper, the relationship between average travel speed and queue lengths at signalized intersections within the urban area is established based on an equivalent assumption. Finally, the average travel speed estimation model proposed in this paper is tested with microscopic simulation platform, and the results showed that the average travel speed estimation model performed well with satisfactory accuracy. In addition, the best performance of the network efficiency can be identified based on the reflections of macroscopic fundamental diagram, and the evaluation system is simple enough for application in engineering. Therefore, the result is instructive both for generating traffic control strategies and for making route choices.