Kinematics Setting:

Traffic Engineering is, at it's roots, a really intricate kinematics problem. Here's a piece of a real engineering problem. On Hwy 97 (3rd Street) there is a light at Revere, one at Olney, one at Greenwood and one at Franklin. Typical on times for green lights on major arterials is between 90 s and 110 s. The posted speed limit is 55 km/h (or should be). You can get relevant distances off of google maps and I have posted various traffic engineering resources below for your consideration. Before you move too far with this project I need an abstract that describes what you are setting out to analyze about this situation so I can be sure that you are on track and making reasonable assumptions and choices. This one page abstract is "due" next week.

I am being deliberately vague about many of the details in this problem because those critical thinking skills are what we all need to practice. You need to make decisions about how fast a typical car accelerates, how far apart they are traveling, how fast they will slow down, and other flow issues. Given the central nature of this corridor you will undoubtedly try to assure that north going traffic has as good a trip as south going traffic.

Useful Documents:

Fort Collins Signal Timing Final Report: (pdf)

Signal Timing Manual: (pdf) This is a federal manual for signal timing. Chapters 5 and 6 seemed helpful at first glance