Caltrans project
Title:  Caltrans TMS Master Plan: I-405/I-5 Traffic Simulation
Researchers: Lianyu Chu, Henry Liu
Time:  2002.3 – 2002.8
Project status: Finished

Project Summary:

This project performs an effectiveness and benefit/cost analysis of existing and planned TMS elements in California based on PARAMICS simulation of the I-405/I-5 corridor network in Orange County.

Project Description:

This project was conducted for the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) Office of Operations for its deployment of traffic management systems (TMS) in California. The existing and planned TMS elements considered in this project include vehicle detection (i.e. loop detector), HOV lane, incident management, arterial management (i.e. adaptive signal control), traveler information, and ramp metering.  

The project consists of the following sub-tasks:

(1)  Build the I-405/I-5 corridor network (located at the city of Irvine, California) model in PARAMICS based on data of network geometry, drivers, vehicle characteristics, and traffic control systems. Most of these data are obtained from Caltrans and City of Irvine.

(2)  Calibrate the I-405/I-5 corridor network model based on a systematic, multi-stage calibration and validation procedure for microscopic simulation models, proposed by the research team.

(3)  Determine the evaluation scenarios and TMS elements in each scenario. These scenarios include incident management, local adaptive ramp metering, coordinated ramp metering, traveler information systems, and the combination of above.

(4)  Emulate those TMS elements that the current commercial PARAMICS cannot directly model via API programming.

(5)  Implement the TMS elements of each scenario in the simulation network.

(6)  Predict the demand level in 2010. Based on the OD table of 2000 and 2025, obtained from OCTAM model, the growth rates of each zone in the network were calculated. The growth rates of 2010 were estimated through interpolation. The growth factor of an origin zone was applied to the demand from this origin zone to any a destination zone.

(7)  Based on the calibrated simulation model, we evaluate these scenarios under non-recurrent congestion based on a series of measures of effectiveness (MOE). These MOEs include system efficiency measure, system reliability measure, freeway mainline efficiency measure, on-ramp efficiency measure, and arterial efficiency measure.