Traffic Flow Theory and Simulation

Catalog description

This course will cover advanced topics related to traffic operations and traffic flow theory. Students will be exposed to a variety of theories, methodologies, and principles that are used to assess traffic operations on surface transportation systems, as well as their applications. The course will be divided into two major subject areas: 1) operations on uninterrupted facilities, such as freeways; and, 2) operations on interrupted facilities, such as urban streets and large urban networks. Topics in the former area include kinematic wave theory, cell and link transmission models, variational theory, moving-bottlenecks, bottleneck identification and incident management. Topics in the latter include signal coordination, macroscopic fundamental diagrams, multimodal conflicts and their impacts. The course also includes an overview of traffic microsimulation software and its applications to both areas.