Current Search: Traffic engineering (x)
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- Title
- Evaluation and Augmentation of Traffic Data from Private Sector and Bluetooth Detection System on Arterials.
- Creator
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Gong, Yaobang, Abdel-Aty, Mohamed, Hasan, Samiul, Cai, Qing, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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Traffic data are essential for public agencies to monitor the traffic condition of the roadway network in real-time. Recently, public agencies have implemented Bluetooth Detection Systems (BDS) on arterials to collect traffic data and purchased data directly from private sector vendors. However, the quality and reliability of the aforementioned two data sources are subject to rigorous evaluation. The thesis presents a study utilizing high-resolution GPS trajectories to evaluate data from HERE...
Show moreTraffic data are essential for public agencies to monitor the traffic condition of the roadway network in real-time. Recently, public agencies have implemented Bluetooth Detection Systems (BDS) on arterials to collect traffic data and purchased data directly from private sector vendors. However, the quality and reliability of the aforementioned two data sources are subject to rigorous evaluation. The thesis presents a study utilizing high-resolution GPS trajectories to evaluate data from HERE, one of the private sector data vendors, and BDS of arterial corridors in Orlando, Florida. The results showed that the accuracy and reliability of BDS data are better than private sector data, which might be credited to a better presentation of the bimodal traffic flow pattern on signalized arterials. In addition, another preliminary study aiming at improving the quality of private sector data was also demonstrated. Information about bimodal traffic flow extracted by a finite mixture model from historical BDS is employed to augment real-time private sector data by a Bayesian inference framework. The evaluation of the augmented data showed that the augmentation framework is effective for the most part of the studied corridor except for segments highly influenced by traffic from or to the expressway ramps.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2018
- Identifier
- CFE0007330, ucf:52120
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0007330
- Title
- A Computer Graphics Analysis of a Freeway Merge Control System.
- Creator
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Risher, Thomas A., Bauer, Christian, Engineering
- Abstract / Description
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Florida Technological University College of Engineering Thesis; In 1975, C.S. Bauer completed a doctoral dissertation at the University of Florida which treated the Green Band Merging Control System on I-75 in Tampa, Florida. In this work, Bauer suggested the possibility for the use of computer graphics as a toll for analysis of the bands generated by the Green Band Control System Simulation developed in his dissertation. The use of computer generated movies of the bands displayed to ramp...
Show moreFlorida Technological University College of Engineering Thesis; In 1975, C.S. Bauer completed a doctoral dissertation at the University of Florida which treated the Green Band Merging Control System on I-75 in Tampa, Florida. In this work, Bauer suggested the possibility for the use of computer graphics as a toll for analysis of the bands generated by the Green Band Control System Simulation developed in his dissertation. The use of computer generated movies of the bands displayed to ramp drivers by the system allows the comparison of various band control strategies without the need for field implementation and testing. With the goal of producing such films in mind, the research topic discussed in this paper was undertaken. The report introduces the reader to some of the basic aspects of computer graphics and presents specialized computer software and interface hardware for producing automated computer graphics movies from a Tektronix 4010 storage display. A brief discussion of the Tampa System and its associated simulation program is presented, and representative frames from the moves of the Tampa System produced in the research are discussed. Suggestions for additional work that could be undertaken in the research area conclude the report.
Show less - Date Issued
- 1976
- Identifier
- CFR0011597, ucf:53042
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFR0011597
- Title
- The effects of altered traffic signs upon vehicular driving modes and consequent fuel conservation and environmental benefits, as measured by vehicular noise-imprints.
- Creator
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Pfarrer, Mark Daniel, null, null, Engineering
- Abstract / Description
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Florida Technological University College of Engineering Thesis; The hypothesis is that the recorded noise-imprints of a vehicle at an intersection can be used to identify and accurately time the driving modes of deceleration, idle, slow cruise, and acceleration. This is proven by analyzing and comparing noise-imprints of vehicles at an uncontrolled intersection marked first with a 'stop' sign, and then by a 'yield' and an experimental 'dead slow' sign. By relating the duration of each driving...
Show moreFlorida Technological University College of Engineering Thesis; The hypothesis is that the recorded noise-imprints of a vehicle at an intersection can be used to identify and accurately time the driving modes of deceleration, idle, slow cruise, and acceleration. This is proven by analyzing and comparing noise-imprints of vehicles at an uncontrolled intersection marked first with a 'stop' sign, and then by a 'yield' and an experimental 'dead slow' sign. By relating the duration of each driving mode to known relations, the overall efficiency of an intersection can be characterized. A new technique for studying various types of traffic conditions at intersections is the result. Initial noise-imprint analysis and comparison shows that a 'yield' sign is to be preferred over a 'stop' sign to decrease travel time, air pollution emissions, gasoline consumption, and wear-and-tear on the car. The experimental 'dead slow' sign is used as a demonstration of the noise-imprint technique upon an unknown situation. The efficiency of a 'dead slow' sign proved to be less than that of a 'yield' sign, but still greater than that of a 'stop' sign.
Show less - Date Issued
- 1976
- Identifier
- CFR0003525, ucf:52986
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFR0003525
- Title
- A GPSS/360 Computer Model for Simulation of Automobile Traffic at Intersections.
- Creator
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Golovcsenko, Igor V., ,, Engineering
- Abstract / Description
-
Florida Technological University College of Engineering Thesis
- Date Issued
- 1974
- Identifier
- CFR0011598, ucf:53135
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFR0011598
- Title
- A New Multidimensional Psycho-Physical Framework for Modeling Car-Following in a Freeway Work Zone.
- Creator
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Lochrane, Taylor, Al-Deek, Haitham, Radwan, Essam, Oloufa, Amr, Harb, Rami, Uddin, Nizam, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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As the United States continues to build and repair the ageing highway infrastructure, the bearing of freeway work zones will continue to impact the capacity. To predict the capacity of a freeway work zone, there are several tools available for engineers to evaluate these work zones but only microsimulation has the ability to simulate the driver behavior. One of the limitations of current car-following models is that they only account for one overall behavioral condition. This dissertation...
Show moreAs the United States continues to build and repair the ageing highway infrastructure, the bearing of freeway work zones will continue to impact the capacity. To predict the capacity of a freeway work zone, there are several tools available for engineers to evaluate these work zones but only microsimulation has the ability to simulate the driver behavior. One of the limitations of current car-following models is that they only account for one overall behavioral condition. This dissertation hypothesizes that drivers change their driving behavior as they drive through a freeway work zone compared to normal freeway conditions which has the potential to impact traffic operations and capacity of work zones. Psycho-physical car-following models are widely used in practice for simulating car-following. However, current simulation models may not fully capture car-following driver behavior specific to freeway work zones. This dissertation presents a new multidimensional psycho-physical framework for modeling car-following based on statistical evaluation of work zone and non-work zone driver behavior. This new framework is close in character to the Wiedemann model used in popular traffic simulation software such as VISSIM. This dissertation used two methodologies for collecting data: (1) a questionnaire to collect demographics and work zone behavior data and (2) a real-time vehicle data from a field experiment involving human participants. It is hypothesized that the parameters needed to calibrate the multidimensional framework for work zone driver behavior can be derived statistically by using data collected from runs of an Instrumented Research Vehicle (IRV) in a Living Laboratory (LL) along a roadway. The design of this LL included the development of an Instrumented Research Vehicle (IRV) to capture the natural car-following response of a driver when entering and passing through a freeway work zone. The development of a Connected Mobile Traffic Sensing (CMTS) system, which included state-of-the-art ITS technologies, supports the LL environment by providing the connectivity, interoperability and data processing of the natural, real-life setting. The IRV and CMTS system are tools designed to support the concept of a LL which facilitates the experimental environment to capture and calibrate natural driver behavior. The objective is to have these participants drive the instrumented vehicle and collect the relative distance and the relative velocity between the instrumented vehicle and the vehicle in the front of the instrumented vehicle. A Phase I pilot test was conducted with 10 participants to evaluate the experiment and make any adjustments prior to the full Phase II driver test. The Phase II driver test recruited a group of 64 participants to drive the IRV through an LL set up along a work zone on I-95 near Washington D.C. in order to validate this hypothesis In this dissertation, a new framework was applied and it demonstrated that there are four different categories of car-following behavior models each with different parameter distributions. The four categories are divided by traffic condition (congested vs. uncongested) and by roadway condition (work zone vs. non-work zone). The calibrated threshold values are presented for each of these four categories. By applying this new multidimensional framework, modeling of car-following behavior can enhance vehicle behavior in microsimulation modeling.This dissertation also explored driver behavior through combining vehicle data and survey techniques to augment the model calibrations to improve the understanding of car-following behavior in freeway work zones. The results identify a set of survey questions that can potentially guide the selection of parameters for car-fallowing models. The findings presented in this dissertation can be used to improve the performance of driver behavior models specific to work zones. This in return will more acutely forecast the impact a work zone design has on capacity during congestion.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2014
- Identifier
- CFE0005521, ucf:50326
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005521
- Title
- Macroscopic Crash Analysis and Its Implications for Transportation Safety Planning.
- Creator
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Siddiqui, Chowdhury, Abdel-Aty, Mohamed, Abdel-Aty, Mohamed, Uddin, Nizam, Huang, Helai, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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Incorporating safety into the transportation planning stage, which is often termed as transportation safety planning (TSP), relies on the vital interplay between zone characteristics and zonal traffic crashes. Although a few safety studies had made some effort towards integrating safety and planning, several unresolved problems and a complete framework of TSP are still absent in the literature. This research aims at examining the suitability of the current traffic-related zoning planning...
Show moreIncorporating safety into the transportation planning stage, which is often termed as transportation safety planning (TSP), relies on the vital interplay between zone characteristics and zonal traffic crashes. Although a few safety studies had made some effort towards integrating safety and planning, several unresolved problems and a complete framework of TSP are still absent in the literature. This research aims at examining the suitability of the current traffic-related zoning planning process in a new suggested planning method which incorporates safety measures. In order to accomplish this broader research goal, the study defined its research objectives in the following directions towards establishing a framework of TSP- i) exploring the existing key determinants in traditional transportation planning (e.g., trip generation/distribution data, land use types, demographics, etc.) in order to develop an effective and efficient TSP framework, ii) investigation of the Modifiable Aerial Unit Problem (MAUP) in the context of macro-level crash modeling to investigate the effect of the zone's size and boundary, iii) understanding neighborhood influence of the crashes at or near zonal boundaries, and iv) development of crash-specific safety measure in the four-step transportation planning process.This research was conducted using spatial data from the counties of West Central Florida. Analysis of different crash data per spatial unit was performed using nonparametric approaches (e.g., data mining and random forest), classical statistical methods (e.g., negative binomial models), and Bayesian statistical techniques. In addition, a comprehensive Geographic Information System (GIS) based application tools were utilized for spatial data analysis and representation.Exploring the significant variables related to specific types of crashes is vital in the planning stages of a transportation network. This study identified and examined important variables associated with total crashes and severe crashes per traffic analysis zone (TAZ) by applying nonparametric statistical techniques using different trip related variables and road-traffic related factors. Since a macro-level analysis, by definition, will necessarily involve aggregating crashes per spatial unit, a spatial dependence or autocorrelation may arise if a particular variable of a geographic region is affected by the same variable of the neighboring regions. So far, few safety studies were performed to examine crashes at TAZs and none of them explicitly considered spatial effect of crashes occurring in them. In order to understand the clear picture of spatial autocorrelation of crashes, this study investigated the effect of spatial autocorrelation in modeling pedestrian and bicycle crashes in TAZs. Additionally, this study examined pedestrian crashes at Environmental Justice (EJ) TAZs which were identified in compliance with the various ongoing practices undertaken by Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) and previous research. Minority population and the low-income group are two important criteria based on which EJ areas are being identified. These unique areal characteristics have been of particular interest to the traffic safety analysts in order to investigate the contributing factors of pedestrian crashes in these deprived areas. Pedestrian and bicycle crashes were estimated as a function of variables related to roadway characteristics, and various demographic and socio-economic factors. It was found that significant differences are present between the predictor sets for pedestrian and bicycle crashes. In all cases the models with spatial correlation performed better than the models that did not account for spatial correlation among TAZs. This finding implied that spatial correlation should be considered while modeling pedestrian and bicycle crashes at the aggregate or macro-level. Also, the significance of spatial autocorrelation was later found in the total and severe crash analyses and accounted for in their respective modeling techniques.Since the study found affirmative evidence about the inclusion of spatial autocorrelation in the safety performance functions, this research considered identifying appropriate spatial entity based on which TSP framework would be developed. A wide array of spatial units has been explored in macro-level crash modeling in previous safety research. With the advancement of GIS, safety analysts are able to analyze crashes for various geographical units. However, a clear guideline on which geographic entity should a modeler choose is not present so far. This preference of spatial unit can vary with the dependent variable of the model. Or, for a specific dependent variable, models may be invariant to multiple spatial units by producing a similar goodness-of-fits. This problem is closely related to the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem which is a common issue in spatial data analysis. The study investigated three different crash (total, severe, and pedestrian) models developed for TAZs, block groups (BGs) and census tracts (CTs) using various roadway characteristics and census variables (e.g., land use, socio-economic, etc.); and compared them based on multiple goodness-of-fit measures.Based on MAD and MSPE it was evident that the total, severe and pedestrian crash models for TAZs and BGs had similar fits, and better than the ones developed for CTs. This indicated that the total, severe and pedestrian crash models are being affected by the size of the spatial units rather than their zoning configurations. So far, TAZs have been the base spatial units of analyses for developing travel demand models. Metropolitan planning organizations widely use TAZs in developing their long range transportation plans (LRTPs). Therefore, considering the practical application it was concluded that as a geographical unit, TAZs had a relative ascendancy over block group and census tract.Once TAZs were selected as the base spatial unit of the TSP framework, careful inspections on the TAZ delineations were performed. Traffic analysis zones are often delineated by the existing street network. This may result in considerable number of crashes on or near zonal boundaries. While the traditional macro-level crash modeling approach assigns zonal attributes to all crashes that occur within the zonal boundary, this research acknowledged the inaccuracy resulting from relating crashes on or near the boundary of the zone to merely the attributes of that zone. A novel approach was proposed to account for the spatial influence of the neighboring zones on crashes which specifically occur on or near the zonal boundaries. Predictive model for pedestrian crashes per zone were developed using a hierarchical Bayesian framework and utilized separate predictor sets for boundary and interior (non-boundary) crashes. It was found that these models (that account for boundary and interior crashes separately) had better goodness-of-fit measures compared to the models which had no specific consideration for crashes located at/near the zone boundaries. Additionally, the models were able to capture some unique predictors associated explicitly with interior and boundary-related crashes. For example, the variables- 'total roadway length with 35mph posted speed limit' and 'long term parking cost' were statistically not significantly different from zero in the interior crash model but they were significantly different from zero at the 95% level in the boundary crash model.Although an adjacent traffic analysis zones (a single layer) were defined for pedestrian crashes and boundary pedestrian crashes were modeled based on the characteristic factors of these adjacent zones, this was not considered reasonable for bicycle-related crashes as the average roaming area of bicyclists are usually greater than that of pedestrians. For smaller TAZs sometimes it is possible for a bicyclist to cross the entire TAZ. To account for this greater area of coverage, boundary bicycle crashes were modeled based on two layers of adjacent zones. As observed from the goodness-of-fit measures, performances of model considering single layer variables and model considering two layer variables were superior from the models that did not consider layering at all; but these models were comparable. Motor vehicle crashes (total and severe crashes) were classified as 'on-system' and 'off-system' crashes and two sub-models were fitted in order to calibrate the safety performance function for these crashes. On-system and off-system roads refer to two different roadway hierarchies. On-system or state maintained roads typically possess higher speed limit and carries traffic from distant TAZs. Off-system roads are, however, mostly local roads with relatively low speed limits. Due to these distinct characteristics, on-system crashes were modeled with only population and total employment variables of a zone in addition to the roadway and traffic variables; and all other zonal variables were disregarded. For off-system crashes, on contrary, all zonal variables was considered. It was evident by comparing this on- and off-system sub-model-framework to the other candidate models that it provided superior goodness-of-fit for both total and severe crashes.Based on the safety performance functions developed for pedestrian, bicycle, total and severe crashes, the study proposed a novel and complete framework for assessing safety (of these crash types) simultaneously in parallel with the four-step transportation planning process with no need of any additional data requirements from the practitioners' side.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2012
- Identifier
- CFE0004191, ucf:49009
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004191
- Title
- USING AUGMENTED REALITY FOR STUDYING LEFT TURN MANEUVER AT UN-SIGNALIZED INTERSECTION AND HORIZONTAL VISIBILITY BLOCKAGE.
- Creator
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Moussa, Ghada, Radwan, Essam, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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Augmented reality "AR" is a promising paradigm that can provide users with real-time, high-quality visualization of a wide variety of information. In AR, virtual objects are added to the real-world view in a real time. Using the AR technology can offer a very realistic environment for driving enhancement as well as driving performance testing under different scenarios. This can be achieved by adding virtual objects (people, vehicles, hazards, and other objects) to the normal view while...
Show moreAugmented reality "AR" is a promising paradigm that can provide users with real-time, high-quality visualization of a wide variety of information. In AR, virtual objects are added to the real-world view in a real time. Using the AR technology can offer a very realistic environment for driving enhancement as well as driving performance testing under different scenarios. This can be achieved by adding virtual objects (people, vehicles, hazards, and other objects) to the normal view while driving in a safe controlled environment. In this dissertation, the feasibility of adapting the AR technology into traffic engineering was investigated. Two AR systems; AR Vehicle "ARV" system and Offline AR Simulator "OARSim" system were built. The systems' outcomes as well as the on-the-road driving under the AR were evaluated. In evaluating systems' outcomes, systems were successfully able to duplicate real scenes and generate new scenes without any visual inconsistency. In evaluating on-the-road driving under the AR, drivers' distance judgment, speed judgment, and level of comfort while driving were evaluated. In addition, our systems were used to conduct two traffic engineering studies; left-turn maneuver at un-signalized intersection, and horizontal visibility blockage when following a light truck vehicle. The results from this work supported the validity of our AR systems to be used as a surrogate to the field-testing for transportation research.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2006
- Identifier
- CFE0001430, ucf:47044
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0001430