(a) What
is “Planning” in Transportation Engineering? Explain briefly with examples.
(b) Explain
the difference between Daily and Seasonal Variation in traffic.
(c) Explain
how Daily volume parameters can be used and why Peak Hour Factor is important
in your own words.
Answer: (A)
Planning
Transportation
planning is the process of looking at the current state of transportation in
the region, designing for future transportation needs, and combining all of
that with the elements of budgets, goals and policies. It helps shape how a
community or city grows by evaluating everything from streets and highways to
cargo ships to public transit and bike lanes. It can influence everything from
business to recreation to quality of life.
Transportation planning is the process It
deals with the transportation planning facilities which will be able to meet the present and future needs in a
sustainable manner.
It includes:
Ø
Trip generation
Ø
Trip distribution
Ø
Mode choice
Ø
Route Selection
The Transportation planning process
has many factors to consider. Modes of transportation , infrastructure ,
technology, demand and users are all needs to be considerations for the overall
process.
Answer: (B)
SEASONAL and
daily VARIATION IN TRAFFIC FLOWS
Seasonal variation in traffic
flows is defined as the ratio of the average daily flow for each month to the
annual average flow. Its variation by day of week is examined using analysis of
variance techniques on data from the 50-point census. Five sets of ratios for
each site are calculated, representing the seasonal variation for Mondays,
Tuesdays to Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. The sites of the
50-point census were grouped (seven groups for weekdays and six groups for
weekends) using these sets of ratios by Beale's cluster analysis. This grouping
did not have any obvious physical interpretation so a more subjective method of
grouping the sites was devised.
This produced four groups of more practical use corresponding
to different types of traffic: urban/commuter, low-flow rural, rural
long-distance, and recreational. Seasonal variation patterns are tabulated for
these four groups for Monday to Friday, Saturday and Sunday. These patterns can
be used to estimate annual average daily traffic flows more accurately than
previously when factors for only a single road type were available.
Daily variation; the
average 24hrs traffic valume of a given location over a full 365days year i.e
daily varience can be computed for 6month,season,week or days.
Answer part C
Daily
volumes parameter are frequently used as the basis for highly planing and
general observationof trend.
Peak Hour factor ; peak hour
factor plays an important role in transportation designing. peak hour factor is
used to convert the hourly traffic valume into the flow rate that represent the
busiest is minuts of the rush hours. peak hour factor has a strong impact on
traffic analysis result