Sub-problem 1a: Traffic Flow Patterns

Flow Patterns
Just east of the bridge for Miller Road is a monitoring point used by the Capital District’s Traffic Management Center, run by NYSDOT Region 1 and the New York State Police. There is a double-loop, 20-foot speed trap in each lane, eastbound and westbound. The inputs from these traps are monitored 24-hours a day, 7-days a week. Because the data is archived, we were able to obtain a copy of the 15-minute data collected at this location for 27 months, from 00:00 on April 25, 2000 to midnight on October 31, 2002.

For purposes of the case study, we studied these data for the 2001 calendar year (Data points for 8,611 of the 8,760 hours in 2001 are shown in Exhibit 4-5, as the traps were out of service during the few remaining hours where no data is available.) and discovered some important things about the flow conditions. The first thing we learned relates to the flows themselves. As can be seen in Exhibit 4-5, the flow rate for a given hour varies widely. There is a diurnal trend that can be identified. The diurnal pattern has its minimum at 2-3:00 AM. The AM peak lasts from about 5-9:00 AM, and it looks like the flow in the eastbound direction is heavier in the AM peak than it is in the PM peak by almost 20%. The largest recorded volume in the AM peak in 2001 was approximately 3,480 veh/hr, recorded on day 311 between 7-8:00 AM.