Examination of Traffic Incident Management Strategies via Multiresolution Modeling with Dynamic Traffic Assignment

Transportation professionals have long faced the challenge of reliably analyzing how differently the transportation system will operate if certain facility improvements are made, an unexpected incident occurs or when certain operational strategies are deployed. This is particularly difficult when these scenarios have system wide impacts. One of the main reasons is that many possible alternative routes exist in a transportation network leading to different paths that drivers can take. The reliability of the traditional transportation modeling tools are often questioned because they lack appropriate methods to address this critical vehicle path finding issue and the resulting time-dependent volumes on alternative routes. Due to the limitations of both travel demand models (TDM) and micro-simulation models in analyzing complex traffic incident management scenarios, a new multi-resolution modeling approach with mesoscopic simulation based Dynamic Traffic Assignment (DTA) was followed. The paper illustrates the approach through a case study. The case study investigates traffic management strategies during a major freeway crash that occurred in the Phoenix metropolitan region. These steps were followed: (1) obtain the initial vehicle origins, destinations and volumes from TDM; (2) apply Dynus-T, a mesoscopic simulation-based DTA model, to conduct scenario analysis and obtain the space and time dependent volumes, vehicle paths and resulting travel times; (3) import the output from the Dynus-T into VISSIM, a micro-simulation model, for more detailed analysis at certain hot spots when necessary. The model calibration, scenario analysis and output of the DTA model will be discussed in detail. This multi-resolution modeling approach appears to be very useful to generate reliable, efficient and cost-effective solutions for complex transportation system management tasks.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADB50 Transportation Planning Applications
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Luo, Lili (Leo)
  • Joshua, Sarath
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 91st Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2012-1-22 to 2012-1-26
• Date: 2012

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; Maps; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 16p
• Monograph Title: TRB 91st Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers DVD

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Case studies; Crashes; Critical path method; Dynamic traffic assignment; Highway traffic control; Incident management; Mesoscopic traffic flow; Microsimulation; Travel demand
• Geographic Terms: Phoenix (Arizona)
• Subject Areas: Highways; Planning and Forecasting; I71: Traffic Theory;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01369985
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 12-0371
• Files: TRIS, TRB
• Created Date: May 16 2012 3:05PM