Author(s)

Yixin Chen

School of Transportation Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, China.

Speed-flow relationship is the fundamental for the traffic simulation and traffic volume forecast. Traditional quadratic polynomial model can’t reflect the saturate flow at signal intersections. In order to determine the speed-flow relationship at signal intersections, the speed and time-headway of vehicles at two signal intersections were investigated and the accuracy of software used to get the speed was tested. After vehicle starting-up from queuing, the time-headway reduces gradually with the increase of speed. The relationship of power exponential function between speed and time-headway is formulated. Traffic volume can be calculated by the vehicle time-headway. Then the speed-flow relationship was developed and an S-shaped curve model was built in this paper. In the S-shaped curve model, traffic flow approaches to the saturate when the speed doesn’t increase. Thus, S-shaped curve model is better to describe the speed-flow relationship at signal intersection. The results can provide a reference to determine the parameters in traffic simulation and for the study of level of service of intersections.

Signal Intersections, Speed-Flow, Time-Headway, Power Exponential Function

Chen, Y. (2017) Model of Traffic Speed-Flow Relationship at Signal Intersections. Open Journal of Applied Sciences, 7, 319-327. doi: 10.4236/ojapps.2017.76025.