INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY BOMBAY

CIVIL ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT

MID SEMESTER EXAMINATION 2020-2021

CE-740 TRAFFIC ENGINEERING

Opens @ 05.30 PM on 08-10-2020 Closes @ 05.30 PM on 09-10-2020

Expected duration: 2 hours Max. Marks: 50
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General instructions:
i. Answer all questions.
ii. Your answers should be submitted in Moodle either in word document (doc, docx) or PDF
or common image (jpg, jpeg) formats. Your files should be named as “Roll
no_CE740_MIDSEM_File no” (e.g.: 193040014_CE740_MIDSEM_1).
iii. Files containing data/supporting information for answering each question are made
available in Moodle.
iv. For questions 2, 3 and 4, the required data is provided in excel files. After opening the
excel file, enable editing, and copy paste the data (as values only) into a new workbook. In
your answers, you should explicitly show the data that you have obtained from these excel
sheets.
v. Assume suitable data wherever necessary.

1.
a. List the objectives of traffic engineering that you consider important as per their order
of priority. Justify the level of priority that you have assigned to each of the listed
objectives.

b. The data on road traffic deaths compiled by World Health Organization (WHO) for the
year 2016 is provided in excel file “CE740_Midsem_Q1_WHO.xlsx”. An explanatory
note on how WHO has arrived at the estimated numbers (provided in column “F” of
the excel sheet) is provided in the pdf file “CE740_Midsem_Q1_WHO.pdf”. Answer
the following based on this data on road traffic deaths and the explanatory note of
WHO.
i. Compare the reported and estimated road traffic death rates (per 100,000
population) for India and explain why the estimated rates by WHO are much
higher? Also give reasons why WHO uses a model for estimating the traffic
road deaths instead of directly using the reported data by the agencies?
ii. Comment on the suitability of the metric (road traffic deaths per 100,000
population) generally used for drawing comparisons across nations. Is there any
better metric that you can suggest? Justify your answer.
 iii. Explain if there is any relation that you observe between road traffic death rate
and GNI per capita.
iv. Which road user is the most vulnerable in India? As a traffic engineer, what
measures do you suggest improving the safety of this vulnerable road user?
(15 marks)

2. A 24-hour traffic volume count conducted on a representative day of the month of October on
a section of a highway is provided in excel file “CE740_Midsem_Q2_TVC.xlsx”. Find the
peak hour in northbound and southbound directions. Report the corresponding peak hour
volumes and peak hour factors. To account for seasonal variations, data on fuel sales at a
nearby fuel station was also collected. This data revealed that the average daily sales for
October month was 20,800 units and the average daily sales for the whole year was 21,900
units. Estimate ADT for this highway from this data. Also report K-factor and D-factor.
(12 marks)

3. The lane capacity of an urban street is found to be Qm veh/hr. Under jamming conditions, the
average space headway of vehicles is found to be Sj m. There are two lanes in each direction
on this divided urban street. The street is having a steady state flow of Q veh/hr per direction.
It is also found that the traffic speed is linearly related to traffic density on this street. Find the
speed of shock wave if one of the carriageways of this street had to be closed due to an incident.
Get the values for Qm, Sj and Q from excel file “CE740_Midsem_Q3_SW.xlsx”.
(8 marks)

4. The authorities decided to signalize the intersection shown in the figure. As no turning
movements are allowed at this intersection, there are going to be only through movements.
Approaches are on level ground. The data on peak hour equivalent car traffic volumes (QN,
QS, QE, QW) on each of the approaches, peak hour factor (PHF), the desired volume-capacity
ratio (XC) and the 85th percentile approach speed (V) are provided in the excel sheet
“CE740_Midsem_Q4_INT.xlsx”. Width (W) of intersection is 21 m. Use saturation flow of
1800 through cars per hour for design purpose. It was also found that the flow on inner
(median) lane of each of the approach is found to be 5% more than the average lane flow of
respective approach. Answer the following:
a. Suggest a suitable phasing for this intersection and show the same in the form of a
phasing and ring diagrams. Use NEMA convention for numbering movements/phases.
Also mention how pedestrian movement will be addressed in the phasing suggested.
b. Find the change and clearance interval that you provide at this intersection.
c. Suggest the startup lost time, clearance start time, lost time per phase and lost time per
cycle that you use in determining the cycle time as per HCM (2016).
d. Find the minimum cycle time required for this intersection.
e. Analyze the dilemma zone for a driver approaching this intersection at a speed of V +
25 km/hr and another driver approaching at a speed of V - 25 km/hr. For this analysis
adopt deceleration of 3 m/s2 and acceleration of 1 m/s2.
(15 marks)

Figure: Schematic of the Intersection in Question No.4