Automatic Estimation Method for Intersection Saturation Flow Rate Based on Video Detector Data

Saturation flow rate (SFR) is a fundamental parameter to the level of service evaluation, lane capacity calculation, and signal timing plan optimization at signalized intersections. It is affected by a variety of factors including weather conditions, lane width, and the type of the driver. How to accurately estimate the SFR remains one of the most important tasks in traffic engineering. Existing studies generally rely on the field measurement method which requires a large number of people collecting data at the intersection. As a result, the method incurs a high economic cost and cannot adapt to the dynamic change of SFR. In recent years, video detectors have been widely installed at intersections which are capable of recording the time each vehicle passes the stop line, the number plate of each vehicle, and the vehicle type. This paper therefore aims to propose an automatic estimation method for the SFR based on video detector data in order to overcome the limitation of the field measurement method. A prerequisite for estimating the SFR is to recognize the saturation headway. the authors consider the actual vehicle headway as time series and build an auxiliary regression equation whose parameters are estimated through the ordinary least squares method. the authors employ the Dickey-Fuller test to verify whether the headways in the time series are saturation headways. An iterative method using quantiles is proposed to filter out abnormal data. The SFR is finally calculated using the average value of saturation headways. To demonstrate the proposed method, the authors conduct a case study using data from an intersection with three entrance lanes in Qujing city, Yunnan Province, China. The overall estimation process is displayed and the impacts of quantile selection and data duration on the estimation accuracy are analyzed.

• Record URL:
  https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/8353084
• Record URL:
  https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/8353084
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/oclc/5121625
• Supplemental Notes:
  • Copyright © 2018 Linhong Wang 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.
• Authors:
  • Wang, Linhong
  • Wang, Yunhao
  • Bie, Yiming
• Publication Date: 2018

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 9p
• Serial:
  • Journal of Advanced Transportation
  • Volume: 2018
  • Issue Number: Article ID 8353084
  • Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated
  • ISSN: 0197-6729
  • EISSN: 2042-3195
  • Serial URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2042-3195
• Publication flags:

  Open Access (libre)

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Data analysis; Headways; Mathematical methods; Saturation flow; Signalized intersections; Traffic flow; Traffic signal timing; Video
• Geographic Terms: Qujing City (China)
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01682102
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Sep 27 2018 4:11PM