Date of Award

12-2009

Degree Name

Master of Science in Engineering

Department

Civil and Construction Engineering

First Advisor

Dr. Jun-Seok Oh

Second Advisor

Dr. Osama Abudayyeh

Third Advisor

Dr. Upul Attanayake

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Campus Only

Abstract

Travel time is a foundational standard to evaluate transportation networks. Several methods may be applied to calculate travel time. One method is applying detectors on highways to obtain data to compute travel time. The purpose of this research study is to find optimal places to deploy sensors in different locations on the 1-94 with a minimal number of sensors, to testify potential impact on travel time, vehicle-miles traveled, and incident detection time. Each location has different characteristics in terms of traffic volumes, interchange types, and area's classification (rural or urban). Travel time is estimated by measuring speed utilizing dual-loop detectors, and determining distance between detectors. Baseline travel time is computed without removing any detectors, while estimated travel is calculated when detectors are removed. Distance between detectors is changeable when a detector is removed. Estimated travel time will be compared with ideal travel time by applying the concept of MAPE (Mean Absolute Percentage Error),and for VMT, APE(Absolute Percentage Error) is used to investigate impact of decreasing number of sensors. This methodology outputs that in an area that has heavy traffic demand, accuracy of travel time is adversely affected when number of detectors is decreased. On the other hand, rural area and small urban area since estimated travel time remains in acceptable level with even number of detectors is decreasing.

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