(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.

 

     (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