The capacity of a freeway is traditionally considered as a constant value in traffic engineering. In reality, capacities vary according to external conditions such as dry or wet road surfaces, daylight or darkness, and to the prevailing travel purpose of drivers on the freeway. Even under constant external conditions different capacities can be observed on freeways because of variations in driv...

Based on the stochastic concept for freeway capacity, the procedure of capacity estimation is developed. Due to the fact that it is impossible to observe the value of the capacity and to obtain the probability distribution of the capacity, the product-limit method is used in this paper to estimate the capacity. In order to implement estimation of capacity using this technology, the lifetime tab...

This paper is aimed at investigating the influence of different types of traffic flows on the capacity of freeway merge areas. Based on the classical gap-acceptance model, two calculating models were established specifically considering randomly arriving vehicles and individual difference in driving behaviours. Monte-Carlo simulation was implemented to reproduce the maximum traffic volume on th...

This article introduces a model for freeway traffic dynamics under stochastic capacity-reducing incidents, and provides insights for freeway incident management by analyzing long-time (stability) properties of the proposed model. Incidents on a multi-cell freeway are modeled by reduction in capacity at the affected freeway sections, which occur and clear according to a Markov chain. We develop ...

capacity of a road facility as an important characteristic in transportation and traffic studies is defined as the maximum rate of flow that could be held by that facility, which has been supposed to have a constant and certain value. this assumption, although necessary for most traffic studies, has also caused some problems, like that of demand exceeding capacity in many road facilities. resea...

The paper introduces a new understanding of freeway capacity. Here capacity is understood as the traffic volume below which traffic still flows and above which the flow breaks down into stop-and-go or even standing traffic. It is easy to understand that a capacity in this sense is by no means a constant value. Empirical analysis of traffic flow patterns, counted at 5minute intervals over severa...