Research Projects

This proposal aims to develop a mathematical model of travel time for two-lane highways that incorporates varying percentages of slow-moving vehicles and the varying flow rate of traffic from the opposite direction. The model will initially consider a traffic stream consisting of only two classes of vehicles: slow-moving vehicles (trucks) and passenger cars, with the traffic state considered to be in equilibrium. However, the model will be improved by relaxing the assumption of an equilibrium traffic state and considering more classes of vehicles in a traffic stream. Experiments will be conducted at suitable sites to collect real-life traffic data, which will be analyzed to gain more insight into the behavior of traffic streams on two-lane highways. This will help improve the proposed model of travel time and calibrate the parameters involved in the model. State-of-the-art methods of travel time estimation involve traffic data obtained from loop detectors, probe vehicles, or metadata from a large number of vehicular trips. In India, well-equipped trip-making vehicles, such as Ola cabs or Uber, are not always available on two-lane highways. Therefore, this project aims to develop a low-cost methodology to estimate travel time for two-lane highways as a reliable mathematical model.