Identification and characteristics analysis of bottlenecks on urban expressways based on floating car data

Identifying bottlenecks and analyzing their characteristics are important tasks to city traffic management authorities.Although the speed difference was proposed for the bottleneck identification in the existing research,the use of a secondary indicator has not been fully discussed.This paper strived to develop a method to identify the bottleneck on expressways by using the massive floating car data(FCD)in Beijing.First,the speed characteristics of bottlenecks on expressway were analyzed based on the speed contour map.The results indicated that there was a significant difference between speeds on the bottleneck and downstream links when a bottleneck was observed.The speed difference could indeed be used as the primary indicator to identify the bottleneck.However,it was also shown that a sufficiently large speed difference does not necessitate an activation of a bottleneck.The speed-at-capacity was then used as the secondary indicator to distinguish the real bottleneck from the non-bottleneck speed difference.Second,a practical method for identifying the bottleneck on expressways was developed based on the speed difference and the speed-at-capacity.Finally,the method was applied to identifying the bottlenecks of the 3rd Outer Ring Expressway in Beijing.The duration,affected distance,delay and cause were used to evaluate and analyze the bottlenecks.

Effect of the W-beam central guardrails on wind-blown sand deposition on desert expressways in sandy regions

Many desert expressways are affected by the deposition of the wind-blown sand,which might block the movement of vehicles or cause accidents.W-beam central guardrails,which are used to improve the safety of desert expressways,are thought to influence the deposition of the wind-blown sand,but this has yet not to be studied adequately.To address this issue,we conducted a wind tunnel test to simulate and explore how the W-beam central guardrails affect the airflow,the wind-blown sand flux and the deposition of the wind-blown sand on desert expressways in sandy regions.The subgrade model is 3.5 cm high and 80.0 cm wide,with a bank slope ratio of 1:3.The W-beam central guardrails model is 3.7 cm high,which included a 1.4-cm-high W-beam and a 2.3-cm-high stand column.The wind velocity was measured by using pitot-static tubes placed at nine different heights(1,2,3,5,7,10,15,30 and 50 cm)above the floor of the chamber.The vertical distribution of the wind-blown sand flux in the wind tunnel was measured by using the sand sampler,which was sectioned into 20 intervals.In addition,we measured the wind-blown sand flux in the field at K50 of the Bachu-Shache desert expressway in the Taklimakan Desert on 11 May 2016,by using a customized 78-cm-high gradient sand sampler for the sand flux structure test.Obstruction by the subgrade leads to the formation of two weak wind zones located at the foot of the windward slope and at the leeward slope of the subgrade,and the wind velocity on the leeward side weakens significantly.The W-beam central guardrails decrease the leeward wind velocity,whereas the velocity increases through the bottom gaps and over the top of the W-beam central guardrails.The vertical distribution of the wind-blown sand flux measured by wind tunnel follows neither a power-law nor an exponential function when affected by either the subgrade or the W-beam central guardrails.At 0.0H and 0.5H(where H=3.5 cm,which is the height of the subgrade),the sand transport is less at the 3 cm height from the subgrade surface than at the 1 and 5 cm heights as a result of obstruction by the W-beam central guardrails,and the maximum sand transportation occurs at the 5 cm height affected by the subgrade surface.The average saltation height in the presence of the W-beam central guardrails is greater than the subgrade height.The field test shows that the sand deposits on the overtaking lane leeward of the W-beam central guardrails and that the thickness of the deposited sand is determined by the difference in the sand mass transported between the inlet and outlet points,which is consistent with the position of the minimum wind velocity in the wind tunnel test.The results of this study could help us to understand the hazards of the wind-blown sand onto subgrade with the W-beam central guardrails.

Design Strategy of New and Reconstructed Interchanges on Expressways

China's urban development is very fast,and the continuous improvement of the national economic level in recent years has also prompted most families to have their own scooters.In this situation,the increase and transformation of road traffic has been a necessary work for the development of various regions.This paper starts with the basic reasons for the design of new and improved interchanges,and expounds the specific design type division and main influencing factors.Finally,the paper puts forward the design strategy of newly added and reconstructed interactive interchanges with high feasibility,hoping to provide reasonable reference for relevant road traffic engineering optimization.

A GIS-Based Framework for Real-Time Debris-Flow Hazard Assessment for Expressways in Korea

Debris flows caused by heavy rainfall in mountain areas near expressways lead to severe social and economic losses and sometimes result in casualties.Therefore, the development of a real-time system for debris-flow hazard assessment is necessary to provide preliminary information for rapid decision making about evacuations or restoration measures, as well as to prevent secondary disasters caused by debris flows. Recently,various map-based approaches have been proposed using multi-attribute criteria and assessment methods for debrisflow susceptibilities. For the macrozonation of debris-flow hazard at a national scale, a simplified method such as the Korea Expressway Corporation(KEC) debris-flow hazard assessment method can be applied for systematic analysis based on geographic information systems(GIS) and monitoring networks. In this study, a GIS-based framework of real-time debris-flow hazard assessment for expressway sections is proposed based on the KEC debris-flow hazard assessment method. First, the KEC-based method was standardized in a systematic fashion using Arc GIS,enabling the objective and quantitative acquisition of various attribute datasets. The quantification of rainfall criteria also was considered. A safety management system for debris-flow hazard was developed based on the GIS platform. Finally, the method was applied and verified on three expressway sections in Korea. The grading standard for each individual influencing attribute was subsequently modified to more accurately assess the debris-flow hazards.

Heavy metals in road-deposited sediment and runoff in urban and intercity expressways

Road-deposited sediments(RDS)accumulated on road surfaces are an important environmental medium that often provides transport for heavy metals.In order to understand the characteristics of heavy metals in RDS,we investigated the size distribution and heavy metal(i.e.Cd,Cr,Cu,Ni,Pb and Zn)concentrations in RDS and road runoff in typical expressways of suburban and rural area in China.The results demonstrated that RDS particles from all impervious expressway surfaces were predominantly coarse particles(>250μm,58.4%±3.8%)and the RDS on all expressways contained more heavy metals than background soils.Furthermore,the concentrations of Cd,Cr,Cu,Ni,Pb and Zn increased with traffic volume,suggesting that these heavy metals are mainly derived from traffic activities.Moreover,it is found that although heavy metals were concentrated in fine grain fractions,the total loading is highest for the coarsest particles due to their large mass percentage.Additionally,it reveals that the heavy metal concentrations in road runoff of suburban expressway are higher than that in urban expressway.Our findings enhance the understanding of expressway pollution,and imply that for controlling runoff pollution from RDS,transportation agencies should be concerned with both fine and coarse particles and take cleaning methods into account.

Analysis of Bridge Inspection Technology for Highway Reconstruction and Expansion

This article focuses on bridge testing technologies in highway construction and expansion projects.It provides an overview of the inspection process for bridges in highway reconstruction and expansion projects,the main inspections,and strategies for improving the quality of inspections.Relevant units should conduct bridge inspections using appearance inspections,special inspections,and bearing capacity assessments in highway reconstruction and expansion projects.To effectively improve testing quality,relevant units should also focus on establishing and improving testing standards,strengthening material testing,and improving the overall quality of the testing personnel.This research aims to enhance the quality of highway reconstruction and expansion projects by supporting the sensible application of bridge inspection technology.

Reinforcement Technology for Soft Soil Roadbed in the Widened Section of Expressway Expansion

This article examines the soft soil roadbed reinforcement technology for widened sections of highways in a specific project.It provides an overview of the project,the principles of soft soil roadbed reinforcement technology for wide sections,and its practical application.The analysis aims to offer guidance on applying soft soil roadbed wide section reinforcement technology and enhancing the overall quality of similar projects.

Decision model and algorithm for traffic rescue resource dispatching on expressway

In order to solve the problems of potential incident rescue on expressway networks, the opportunity cost-based method is used to establish a resource dispatch decision model. The model aims to dispatch the rescue resources from the regional road networks and to obtain the location of the rescue depots and the numbers of service vehicles assigned for the potential incidents. Due to the computational complexity of the decision model, a scene decomposition algorithm is proposed. The algorithm decomposes the dispatch problem from various kinds of resources to a single resource, and determines the original scene of rescue resources based on the rescue requirements and the resource matrix. Finally, a convenient optimal dispatch scheme is obtained by decomposing each original scene and simplifying the objective function. To illustrate the application of the decision model and the algorithm, a case of the expressway network is studied on areas around Nanjing city in China and the results show that the model used and the algorithm proposed are appropriate.

Analysis of Heavy Metal Content in Food Crops Planted Along the Shaanxi Inner Mongolia Expressway

To understand the effect of the running of Shaanxi Inner Mongolia Expressway on food crops planted along the sides, we determined the heavy metal contents(Zn, Pb, Cu and Cb) in the digestion solutions of the root, stem and leaf from rice and corn. The results showed that highway promoted the accumulation of heavy metal elements in corn and rice. Compared with the CKs(crops produced where no highway extend), contents of heavy metal elements in two crops tested from two sampling sites were both over standard. This indicates that food crops planted within 100 m away from the highway are been polluted by heavy metals, which is directly related with the running of Shaanxi Inner Mongolia Expressway. Based on this, the areas within 100 m away from the highway are not suggested to cultivate food crops.

Expressway traffic flow prediction using chaos cloud particle swarm algorithm and PPPR model

Aiming at the real-time fluctuation and nonlinear characteristics of the expressway short-term traffic flow forecasting the parameter projection pursuit regression PPPR model is applied to forecast the expressway traffic flow where the orthogonal Hermite polynomial is used to fit the ridge functions and the least square method is employed to determine the polynomial weight coefficient c.In order to efficiently optimize the projection direction a and the number M of ridge functions of the PPPR model the chaos cloud particle swarm optimization CCPSO algorithm is applied to optimize the parameters. The CCPSO-PPPR hybrid optimization model for expressway short-term traffic flow forecasting is established in which the CCPSO algorithm is used to optimize the optimal projection direction a in the inner layer while the number M of ridge functions is optimized in the outer layer.Traffic volume weather factors and travel date of the previous several time intervals of the road section are taken as the input influencing factors. Example forecasting and model comparison results indicate that the proposed model can obtain a better forecasting effect and its absolute error is controlled within [-6,6] which can meet the application requirements of expressway traffic flow forecasting.

Study of macroscopic fundamental diagram on Shanghai urban expressway network in China

The macroscopic fundamental diagram（ MFD） is studied to obtain the aggregate behavior of traffic in cities. This paper investigates the existence and the characteristics of different types of daily MFD for the Shanghai urban expressway network. The existence of MFD in the Shanghai urban expressway network is proved based on two weeks＇ data.Moreover, the hysteresis phenomena is present in most days and the network exhibits different hysteresis loops under different traffic situations. The relationship between the hysteresis phenomena and the inhomogeneity of traffic distribution is verified. The MFDs in the years of 2009 and 2012 are compared. The hysteresis loop still exists in 2012, which further verifies the existence of the hysteresis phenomenon. The direct relationship between the length of the hysteresis loop（ ΔO） and the congestion is proved based on sufficient data. The width of the hysteresis loop, i. e., the drop in network flow（ ΔQ） has no relationship with the congestion, and it varies from day to day under different traffic situations.

Construction of Cultural Landscapes along the Ya'an-Luguhu Expressway——Discussion about Techniques of Designing Highway Cultural Landscapes

The concept of cultural landscapes was introduced,and it was proposed that the construction of highway cultural landscapes should follow the principles of "protection first,secure,integrated,suitable for actual conditions,economic,natural and ecological".In this study,relevant theories were taken to analyze the design of cultural landscapes along the Ya'an-Luguhu Expressway in Sichuan Province.Natural conditions,profound cultures and historical resources in the study area were analyzed,and the construction of its cultural landscapes was further discussed from the perspectives of properly dividing landscape spaces,determining the orientation of cultural landscapes,refining regional cultures,choosing carriers of cultural landscapes,improving cultural value of important landscape nodes by using artistic settings,applying more local materials and so on.So that helpful references could be provided for the landscape design of other expressways,and the integration of cultural landscapes and highway landscape system could be realized.

Slope Protection with Vegetation of Baoji(Shaanxi)-Hanzhong(Shaanxi) Expressway

With expressway development and environment protection consciousness improving, slope protection technology with vegetation has drawn much more attention. From the perspective of ecology, Baoji-Hanzhong Expressway maximized slope protection technology with vegetation and formed attracting landscapes on basis of eco-protection. This research introduced the technology of Baoji-Hanzhong Expressway, and explored a low-cost and effective biological slopeprotection way, suitable for Baoji-Hanzhong Expressway, according to slope protection technologies, at home and abroad, with botany, water and soil conservation engineering, and architecture, which fixed and stabilized slopes, prevented rainfall scouring, and advanced slope protection development in China.

A Study on Location of Facilities of Acceptable Gap Control System of the Entrance Ramp on Expressway

The concept of control system of acceptable gap in the entrance ramp, the construction of the minimum acceptable gap and the method of determining it are introduced. On the above-mentioned basis and by taking the Chinas reality into consideration, the issues on the design of control system of acceptable gap are approached in this paper.

Practical Management of Distance Based Toll System for Urban Expressway

According to the extension of ETC （Electronic Toll Collection） System, the distance based toll system has been recently introduced to realize the effective traffic management for urban transport networks. In the study, urban road network in Keihanshin area is analyzed as an empirical study. The traffic assignment technique is modified to estimate the traffic conditions on the network with describing the individual route charging as well as diversion traffic. The impact of implementation of distance based toll onto the real scale transport network can be evaluated to discuss the social benefit of road users. The advanced technique with intelligent information processing can be proposed to determine the optimal combination of parameters in distance based toll function. In the study, the reduction of total travel time of road users is regarded as the index of the social benefit on urban network. Therefore, the estimation model of total travel time is created by neural network without the estimation process for large scale network. After the optimal combination of parameters is determined, practical road pricing policy on the urban network can be analyzed. Finally, the optimal function form of distance based toll is recommended in practical implementation.

Automated extraction of expressway road surface from mobile laser scanning data

This paper presents a voxel-based region growing method for automatic road surface extraction from mobile laser scanning point clouds in an expressway environment.The proposed method has three major steps:constructing a voxel model;extracting the road surface points by employing the voxel-based segmentation algorithm;refining the road boundary using the curb-based segmentation algorithm.To evaluate the accuracy of the proposed method,the two-point cloud datasets of two typical test sites in an expressway environment consisting of flat and bumpy surfaces with a high slope were used.The proposed algorithm extracted the road surface successfully with high accuracy.There was an average recall of 99.5%,the precision was 96.3%,and the F1 score was 97.9%.From the extracted road surface,a framework for the estimation of road roughness was proposed.Good agreement was achieved when comparing the results of the road roughness map with the visual image,indicating the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed framework.

Numerical analysis on thermal regime of wide embankment in permafrost regions of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

This study investigated the temperature field and thawing depth of wide embankment for expressway in permafrost regions based on numerical analysis by using finite element method(FEM).According to specific embankment section of Qinghai-Tibet highway,computational region for numerical analysis was defined.And numerical model was developed through FEM software named as ABAQUS and was verified by field observed data.The effects by width and height of embankment on the thermal regime of computational region were analyzed based on FEM modeling.Numerical analysis showed that embankment construction has serious disturbance on the thermal stability of ground permafrost showing as annual average ground temperature and the maximum thawing depth keeps increasing with service time increasing.And larger embankment width leads to poorer thermal stability and more serious uneven temperature field of embankment.Raising embankment height can improve the thermal stability; however,the improvement is restricted for wide embankment and it cannot change the degradation trend of thermal stability with service life increasing.Thus,to construct expressway with wide embankment in permafrost regions of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau,effective measures need to be considered to improve the thermal stability of underlying permafrost.

Pre-evaluation on stability of proposed expressway embankment with existing geothermal regulation measures in permafrost regions

Embankment stability is the primary problem for the expressway construction in permafrost regions.The proposed Qinghai-Tibet Expressway(QTE)is planned to construct along the Qinghai-Tibet Project Corridor.Confronted with harsh environmental condition and intense heat exchange between earth and atmosphere,it is necessary to predict and evaluate the stability of the proposed QTE.In this study,the factors affecting the embankment stability are analyzed firstly.And then,a scheme for the stability evaluation of the embankment is established.Finally,the evaluation scheme is used for the pre-evaluation of the stability for the proposed QTE with different geothermal regulation measures(GRMs).The results indicate that the influencing factors include climatic environment,permafrost property,engineering condition and geological condition,and among them,engineering condition and permafrost property are the main influence factors for embankment stability.The stability of the proposed QTE varies greatly in the different geomorphological regions.The application effect and contribution to embankment stability of the existing GRMs are different,and using GRMs cannot completely overcome the influence of various factors on expressway stability.In the construction process,different GRMs should be adopted depending on the geomorphological environment where the embankment is located to ensure the embankment stability.

Expressway Traffic Flow Model Study Based on Different Traffic Rules

In this paper, two cellular automata traffic models are proposed to simulate the operation of an expressway. The results show that the flow rate and the average velocity are generally equal in the same density which is different among the lanes. The analysis of lane changing times and the velocity total deviation show some characteristics which are difficult to explain phase transitions under fundamental diagram theory. Therefore,the concept of lane changing probability is introduced, and it is concluded that the speed-limit rule can reduce the motivation of lane changing effectively.

Study on the temperature characteristic and high temperature risk of asphalt layer of Beijing-Xinjiang ExpresswayWutong Daquan to Yiwu Section

High temperature rutting is a typical highway damage in Xinjiang, China, and its trigger process usually has a close relationship with characteristics of road temperature distribution. A numerical model of earth-atmosphere coupling heat transfer on a typical section of the Beijing-Xinjiang Expressway(G7) from Wutong Daquan to Yiwu was established in this work. Spatiotemporal characteristics of pavement structure layer temperature distribution, frequency and duration times of road surface high temperature from May 1 to September 30 are statistically studied. The effects of wind speed, weather and air temperature on asphalt layer and pavement temperature are analyzed. The results show that:(1) Spatial and temporal temperature distribution characteristics of pavement structural layers are greatly affected by the coupled earth-atmosphere heat transfer process. Surface temperature increases along the airflow direction and daily temperature variation of the pavement structure layer decreases with an increase of depth.(2) G7 expressway will face the challenge of high rutting damage. The proportion of temperature higher than 50 ℃ for pavement surface and asphalt upper layer both exceeds 50%and high temperature of road lasts for more than six hours in numerous days.(3) High temperatures of asphalt pavement are usually associated with low ambient wind speeds, while the wind flow has little cooling effect when the road surface temperature is relative high. Weather conditions have a significant impact on temperature of the road surface. The probability of high temperature in sunny days is obviously higher than other weather conditions.(4) Pavement temperature rises as air temperature rises. When air temperature is higher than 30 °C, the proportion of pavement daily maximum temperature over softening point reaches up to 78%.