Analysis of the Impact of user’s Violations on the Saturation Flow Rate at Signalized Intersections

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 M.Sc., Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

2 Assistant Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, , Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Accurate estimation of saturation flow rate is a prerequisite for accurate estimation of level of service and delays of signalized intersections. Saturation flow rate of intersections depends on many factors, including traffic behavior and culture. One of the important problems of traffic behavior in Iran is the violation of law at the physical region of intersections. The main purpose of this paper is to study the effects of violations such as pedestrians and motorcyclists ignoring the red light and vehicles changing their lanes at the physical region of intersections on the saturation flow rate.
The raw data was gathered through monitoring from 100 cycles of traffic light at Valiasr-Taleghani intersection in city of Tehran during evening peak hours and extracting about 3000 headways. The study is based on the use of linear and nonlinear regression models. The results show that user’s violations affect saturation flow rate; one unit increase in the traffic light violations by motorcyclists (per hour) leads to 0.66 unit decrease in the saturation flow rate, and one unit increase in the violations by pedestrians passing the crosswalk near the intersection entrance reduced the saturation flow rate by 0.43. The non-linear regression model was used to estimate the coefficients for each of the violations and to adjust the base saturation flow rate values suggested by the highway capacity manual.

Keywords


-Chen, X., Shao, C., Li, D. and Dong, C. (2009) "Capacity reliability of signalized intersections with mixed traffic conditions ", Tsinghua Science and Technology, Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 333-340.
-Chen, Y., He, Y. and Sun, X. (2015) "Impact of pedestrian traffic on saturation rate of protected left-turn at urban intersections ", Open Journal of Applied Sciences, Vol. 5, Ni. 1,  22. Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 22.
-Coeymans A, J. and Herrera M. J. (2003) "Estimating values for traffic parameters in turning lanes", Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 1852, pp. 47–54.
-Falaki, H. (2009) "Saturation flow rate of signalized intersections in Tehran", Dissertation for master’s degree in civil engineering- roads and transportation, Faculty of Engineering, Tehran University.
-Harrell, F. E. (2013) "Regression modeling strategies: with applications to linear models, logistic regression, and survival analysis", Springer Science and Business Media.
-Hunter, E. E., Salamati, K., Elefteriadou, L., Sisiopiku, V. P., Rouphail, N. M., Phillips, B. N. and Schroeder, B. J. (2015) "Driver yielding at unsignalized midblock crossings", In Transportation Research Board 94th Annual Meeting.
-Jiang, D. (2014) "The analysis of the impact between motor vehicles and pedestrians at signalized intersection",
-Jie, L., van Zuylen, H. J., Chen, Y. and Lu, R. (2012) "Comparison of driver behaviour and saturation flow in China and the Netherlands", IET Intelligent Transport Systems, Vol. 6 No. (3), pp. 318–327.
-Jin, X., Zhang, Y., Wang, F., Li, L., Yao, D., Su, Y. and Wei, Z. (2009) "Departure headways at signalized intersections: A log-normal distribution model approach", Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, Vol. 17, No. (3), pp. 318–327.
-Khabiri, M. (2018) "Assessing behavioral patterns of motorcyclists based on traffic control device at city intersections by classification tree algorithm", International Journal of Transportation Engineering, Vol. 5, No. 4, pp. 415–501.
-Lu, H., Shi, Q. and Masato, I. (2006) "A study on traffic characteristics at signalized Intersections in Beijing and Tokyo", In Proc., 2nd Conference of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies.
-Manual, H. C. (2010) "HCM2010 ", Transportation Research Board, National Research Council, Washington, DC.
Shang, H., Zhang, Y. and Fan, L. (2014) "Heterogeneous lanes’ saturation flow rates at signalized intersections", Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, No.138, pp. 3–10.
-Shao, C., Rong, J. and Liu, X. (2011) "Study on the saturation flow rate and its influence factors at signalized intersections in China", Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, Vol. 16, pp. 504–514.
-Tian, Z. and Xu, F. (2006) "Modeling the effects of pedestrians on intersection capacity and delay with actuated signal control", In Proc., 5th International Symposium on Highway Capacity. Citeseer.
-Viney, N. D. and Pretty, R. L. (1982) "Saturation flow of a movement subject to a pedestrian stream at traffic signals ", Transportation Research Record, No. 1091, pp. 62–67.
-Wei, H., Lu, F., Hou, G. and Mogharabi, A. (2003) "Nonmotorized interference and control measures at signalized intersections in China ", Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 1846, pp. 44–49.