Browsing by Subject "Congestion"

Now showing 1 - 11 of 11
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    Access Across America: Auto 2022 Data
    (2024-10-21) Owen, Andrew; Liu, Shirley Shiqin; Jain, Saumya; Hockert, Matthew; Lind, Eric; owenx148@umn.edu; Owen, Andrew; University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies, Accessibility Observatory
    These data were created as part of a study that examined the accessibility to jobs by auto in the 50 largest (by population) metropolitan areas in the United States. The data include access at realistic observed driving speeds by time of day and road segment. The underlying speed data inputs restrict data sharing to participating sponsor states. The data available describe access to jobs by auto in the states/districts of California, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia; and the metropolitan areas within these states. These data are part of a longitudinal study. Auto data for additional years can be found in the Accessibility Observatory Data collection: http://hdl.handle.net/11299/200592
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    Congestion / Road Pricing Study: Metropolitan Area of Minneapolis and St. Paul
    (1994-06) Wilbur Smith Associates
    This report summarizes the results of a preliminary feasibility assessment of congestion/road pricing in the metropolitan area of Minneapolis and St. Paul. The study was authorized under a contract with the Metropolitan Council; with funding and administrative guidance provided jointly by representatives of the Council, the Minnesota Department of Transportation and the University of Minnesota's Center for Transportation Studies. The study addressed the general viability of congestion and/or road pricing concepts. The principal differences between the two concepts lie in the method and scope of application and the primary motivation for implementation. Congestion pricing, in the classical sense, is aimed explicitly at demand management which might involve relatively high levels of toll charges in more concentrated, congested areas. Road pricing would typically represent a more broadly applied user fee, in which both demand management and revenue generation are key objectives.
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    Congestion in the Twin Cities – Who's Paying the Price? 2000
    (Center for Transportation Studies University of Minnesota, 2000-11) Center for Transportation Studies
    Nov. 28–29, 2000 – Workshop to explore congestion issues and discuss market-based or value-pricing solutions for the region.
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    Development and Application of Demand-Responsive Ramp Metering Control to Improve Traffic Management in Freeway Corridors
    (1992-01) Stephanedes, Yorgos J.; Kwon, Eil; Chang, Kaikuo; Yao, Ping
    A method is developed for evaluating traffic-responsive ramp metering strategies and improving freeway performance. The method emulates real-time metering and rigorously traces the interactions between automatic rate-selection metering strategies and freeway performance through time. Given a demand pattern and freeway geometrics, it provides assessment of metering strategies that change continuously at very short time intervals. Further, it explicitly treats time delays that can be caused by hardware or introduced by the traffic engineer.
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    Development and Application of On-Line, Integrated Control Strategies for Optimal Metering, Incident Management and Driver Guidance in Freeway Networks: Phase I Final Report
    (1993-04) Stephanedes, Yorgos J.; Kwon, Eil; Chang, Kaikuo; Vairamidis, Nikos
    Managing freeway congestion requires an integrated approach involving demand-responsive ramp metering, incident management and driver guidance. While a freeway network acts as a system, i.e., conditions on any part affect other parts in the network, the state of the art in real-time freeway management has not reached the point where comprehensive, network-wide optimal control schemes are automatically generated and implemented through on-line optimization and coordination of various control actions. A major difficulty lies in the lack of efficient computational algorithms implementable for on-line optimization, and the lack of accurate on-line predictors, that can predict traffic demand and diversion in freeway networks. As a result of the above limitations, most traffic responsive metering systems, such as the Twin Cities freeway control system, employ automatic rate-selection procedures. These procedures select the most appropriate metering rates for a ramp from a pre-determined library using the information received from loop detectors on the main freeway, upstream and downstream from the ramp. Although this method provides a degree of self-adjustment to prevailing traffic conditions, the lack of an efficient analysis tool to evaluate and update the key components of the control, i.e., thresholds and rate-libraries, significantly restricts the effectiveness of control.
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    Development of Advanced Traffic Flow Models and Implementation in Parallel Processing: Final Report
    (1992-10) Lyrintzis, Anastasios; Michalopoulos, Panos; Chronopoulos, Anthony
    Advanced traffic management and control schemes require that traffic simulation models be adequately accurate and computationally efficient in describing traffic flow dynamics. It is proved by practice that the continuum models are more suitable for such purposes. The KRONOS model, developed at the University of Minnesota for traffic flow simulations, is based on a simple continuum formulation implemented by a finite difference method. The results show that the program can be used for transportation planning, design, maintenance operations and freeway management. The main purpose of this project, funded by the Center for Transportation Studies of the University of Minnesota, is to reduce the above flaws by developing advanced traffic flow models. Moreover, various numerical methods are investigated in this project.
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    Development of an Integrated Simulation Package for Freeway Design, Operations and Adaptive Traffic Management. Phase I: Enhancement of the Kronos Simulation Program
    (1992-01) Michalopoulos, Panos; Kwon, Eil; Lee, Chifung; Mahadevan, Gopalakrishnan; Kang, JeongGyu
    The main purpose of this project is to make KRONOS, a microcomputer-based freeway simulation program under development operational by resolving the following problems problems: detailed field testing and adjustments of the program with real freeway data, analysis of sensitivities in simulation models with respect to the variations in input data, and enhancements of the input/output module to be suitable for the Mn/DOT planning environment. In addition, a new simulation module to treat special types of freeway segements incluing merging/diverging of two freeways is developed and incorporated into KRONOS in this project. The major accomplisments made in this project are summarized.
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    ITMS Operational Test of Advanced Traffic Management and Traveler Information Systems : Integrated Traffic Management System Program in the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area
    (1992-10)
    Improving the efficiency of the nation's highways remains as one of the key objectives of the IVHS community ever since the applications of advanced technology to highway transportation began to receive the attention it is now getting. One of the primary initiatives in the drive to satisfy this goal is to better manage and control the movement of traffic in the typically congested urban highway environment. The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul already has one of the most advanced traffic control and management systems in the nation. Mn/DOT has a significant data collection and processing capacity as well as the ability to disseminate information via changeable message signs and highway advisory radio. The Integrated Traffic Management System (ITMS) program aims to integrate the existing traffic management systems and coordinate their operation via a comprehensive communication network.
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    Reasons for Recent Large Increases in Commute Durations
    (Minnesota Department of Transportation, 2007-01) Barnes, Gary
    Commute durations in Minnesota increased by about two and a half minutes on average during the 1990s. Given earlier evidence suggesting that commute times remain fairly stable over time, this was a surprisingly large increase. The research described in this report was undertaken to try to identify reasons for this increase, and, specifically, for why it happened when and where it did. Growth in commute durations does not appear to have been significantly driven by land use or economic factors. Commutes grew slower in the Twin Cities and other urban counties than in the rest of the state, despite congestion and land use changes in these areas. And overall there was little correlation between economic factors and the rate commute growth, especially outside the Twin Cities area. Some of the increase seems to be due to a change in methodology in the 2000 census. Adjusting for this, the overall commute time increase in the 1990s (11%) was slightly larger than in the 1980s (7%) because in the 1980s travel speeds statewide increased slightly, offsetting longer distances to some degree. Because speeds statewide remained constant in the 1990s, all the increase in distance was reflected in longer travel times.
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    The role of road user costs in benefit-cost analysis.
    (2009-12) Hong, Feili
    An economically and socially healthy urban region always needs to move people and goods in a timely fashion. However, with the development of urban land, many corridors in urban regions suffer from great congestion, since demand is close to or greater than the capacity of the roadways. In order to improve traffic conditions, transportation planners need to identify and select the best projects that will expand and upgrade existing facilities by using Benefit-Cost Analysis. Usually, Benefit-Cost Analysis assists transportation planners by balancing the consideration of user benefits against the total costs of the projects, by translating them into monetary terms. The principal elements in Benefit-Cost Analysis are travel time costs, vehicle operation costs, and safety costs. These elements of a Base Case are compared to those of one or more Project Alternatives that offer significant improvements. However, the Road User Costs (RUC) during construction, which have the same three components, is often ignored in Benefit Cost Analysis. When RUC is significant, it can generate different results in a Benefit Costs Analysis. The objective of this study is to propose an improved process of Benefit-Cost Analysis, evaluating investment costs and all user costs and benefits during construction and during a facilities' lifetime. Furthermore, since comprehensive calculations of areawide RUC during the construction phase are often lacking, this study also proposes three procedures of user cost calculation by utilizing three levels of analytical tools: one Sketch-Planning Tool (specifically, QuickZone); one Travel Demand Model (Cube Voyager); and one Microscopic Simulator (AIMSUN). In order to implement this improved procedure of Benefit-Cost Analysis, the TH-36 reconstruction project, in North St Paul, Minnesota, was utilized. Through conducting Benefit-Cost Analysis of two planned construction alternatives, Full Closure and Partial Closure, this study concluded that RUC during the construction phase are important and the selection of an optimal construction alternative can be different due to the inclusion of RUC.