Question

What are the detailed tasks of each of the following traffic areas to complete the transport/traffic part of the project??

Please provide all the breakdown of the tasks which are required to perform in the following areas to complete the project:

I. traffic generation

II. traffic distribution

III. Traffic simulation

III. Mode distribution

What are the tasks breakdown of Traffic generation?

What are the tasks breakdown of Traffic distribution?

What are the tasks breakdown of Mode distribution ?

What are the tasks breakdown of Traffic simulation?

Please provide the answer of all the parts in detail.

Answer 1

TASKS BREAKDOWN OF TRAFFIC GENERATION

Traffic generation is basically a measure of vehicles (and sometimes pedestrian) movements associated with various sites or land uses. It is defined as the number of uni-directional vehicle (or pedestrian) movements arriving at or leaving the study/analysis area.

• Firstly a site should be chosen to perform the counting.
• Any previous data of traffic flow regarding to the same site should also be kept handy and if possible, it should also be accounted in the study.
• Counting could be manual or automatic
  • pneumatic tubes or inductive loop technology could be used to make counting automatic and accurate.
• Data could be recorded (for example) as follows
  • Passenger Cars
  • Pick up or Van less than 1.5 tons
  • Trucks, more than 1.5 and less than 5 tons
  • Light Lorries, more than 5 and less than 10 tons
  • Medium Lorries, more than 10 and less than 20 tons
  • Heavy Lorries, more than 20 tons
  • Heavy Buses
  • Mini Buses
  • Agriculture Tractors
• Analysis and Representation of traffic data
  • it could be data entry analysis on an excel sheet or tabular analysis on any suitable software.

TASKS BREAKDOWN OF TRAFFIC DISTRIBUTION

• On the basis of speed of vehicle
  • like journey speed could be calculated on the basis of distance to major destinations and knowing the kind of vehicles which uses the highway 95% of time.
• On the basis of vehicle type
  • heavy weight motor vehicles are generally slower then light weight motor vehicles and are thus desired to move in a separate dedicated lane.
• On the basis of desired destination
  • highway's traffic is distributed keeping in mind the desired destination or major destinations.

TASKS BREAKDOWN OF TRAFFIC SIMULATION

• Formulation of the aims/scope of the study
  • You need to be precise about the scope of simulation you desire to carry out and must point down the aims or objectives.
• Input data collection
  • you must have a valid(authentic) data to carry out simulation on, otherwise the results of the simulation may vary.
• Construction of the simulation model
  • if the simulation is carried out on a software you must have a proper code on which the data would be analysed.
  • if simulation is done via a working model then construction must be done according to the data available. For example, you cannot show a higher density traffic on a highway which can handle double the traffic density available in analytical data. Ratios and proportions must be maintained.  
• model verification
  • Model must be verified with respect to current applicable standards and applicable location protocols.
• model calibration
  • calibration is important to achieve results.
• model validation
  • must get the model validated by some experienced/reputed faculty or institution.
• alternatives analysis
  • the should also be some sort of software analysis with model analysis of the same data.
• Documentation
  • it is the most important step that includes mention of software/model type/factors responsible/factors applicable etc that made the simulation possible and got results.

TASKS BREAKDOWN OF MODE DISTRIBUTION

• Trip-end model split
  • The objective of the transportation planning was to forecast the growth in demand for car trips so that investment could be planned to meet the demand. When personal characteristics were thought to be the most important determinants of mode choice, attempts were made to apply modal-split models immediately after trip generation. Such a model is called trip-end modal split model. In this way different characteristics of the person could be preserved and used to estimate modal split. The modal split models of this time related the choice of mode only to features like income, residential density and car ownership. Advantage is that these models could be very accurate in the short run, if public transport is available and there is little congestion. Limitation is that they are insensitive to policy decisions example: Improving public transport, restricting parking etc. would have no effect on modal split according to these trip end models.
• Trip-interchange modal split
  • It is the post distribution model; that is modal split is applied after the distribution stage.This has the advantage that it is possible to include the characteristics of the journey and that of the alternative modes available to undertake them. It is also possible to include policy decisions.This is beneficial for long term modeling.
• Aggregate and Dis-aggregate models
  • Choice could be aggregate if they are based on zonal and inter zonal information. They can be called dis-aggregate if they are based on household or individual data.