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Practical approach to determining traffic congestion propagation boundary due to traffic incidents

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Abstract

A practical approach for predicting the congestion boundary due to traffic incidents was proposed. Based on the kinematic wave theory and Van Aerde single-regime flow model, a model for estimating the congestion propagation speed for the basic road segment was developed. Historical traffic flow data were used to analyze the time variant characteristics of the urban traffic flow for each road type. Then, the saturation flow rate was used for analyzing the impact of the traffic incident on the traversing traffic flow at the congestion area. The base congestion propagation speed for each road type was calculated based on field data, which were provided by the remote traffic microwave sensors (RTMS), floating car data (FCD) system and screen line survey. According to a comparative analysis of the congestion propagation speed, it is found that the expressway, major arterial, minor arterial and collector are decreasingly influenced by the traffic incident. Subsequently, the impact of turning movements at intersections on the congestion propagation was considered. The turning ratio was adopted to represent the impact of turning movements, and afterward the corresponding propagation pattern at intersections was analyzed. Finally, an implementation system was designed on a geographic information system (GIS) platform to display the characteristics of the congestion propagation over the network. The validation results show that the proposed approach is able to capture the congestion propagation properties in the actual road network.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Traffic and Transportation, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, 100044, China

    Wen-peng Fei  (费文鹏) & Guo-hua Song  (宋国华)

  2. China Communications News, Beijing, 100011, China

    Fan Zhang  (张凡)

  3. Beijing Transportation Research Center, Beijing, 100073, China

    Yong Gao  (高永)

  4. College of Science, Engineering and Technology, Texas Southern University, Houston, Texas, 77004, USA

    Lei Yu  (于雷)

Authors
  1. Wen-peng Fei  (费文鹏)
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  2. Guo-hua Song  (宋国华)
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  3. Fan Zhang  (张凡)
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  4. Yong Gao  (高永)
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  5. Lei Yu  (于雷)
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Guo-hua Song  (宋国华).

Additional information

Foundation item: Project(2012CB725403) supported by the National Basic Research Program of China; Projects(51678045, 51578052) supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China; Project(2016JBM032) supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, China

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Fei, Wp., Song, Gh., Zhang, F. et al. Practical approach to determining traffic congestion propagation boundary due to traffic incidents. J. Cent. South Univ. 24, 413–422 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11771-017-3443-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11771-017-3443-7

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