PURPOSES : Traffic congestion on freeway generally occurs when the traffic volume exceeds the road capacity. Most traffic manuals *such as the Korean Highway Capacity Manual) present the highway capacity as approximately 2,000 units/hour. However, in the real world, freeway congestion occurs for various reasons, including unusual driver behaviors, physical road limitations, and large traffic volumes. Thus, the flow rate at a traffic breakdown can have a wide range of volumes. Therefore, using 5-min volume and speed data from the field, this study explores the stochastic features of traffic breakdowns on major urban freeways in Seoul. METHODS : First, a breakdown point is defined by applying a wavelet transform to identify the sharp drop in the speed data near freeway bottlenecks. Second, based on the flow rate at and before a breakpoint, a survival analysis is performed to construct the probability distributions of the traffic breakdown. Log-rank tests are also conducted to verify the similarities of the distributions between freeways. RESULTS : The analysis results confirm the stochastic features of the urban freeways in Seoul. Specifically, the freeways have typical S-shaped distributions of breakdown probabilities. However, the distributions rise steeply (exceeding a 50% of breakdown probability) at flow rates of 1,150 vphpl to 1,700 vphpl; this is lower than the general expectation. CONCLUSIONS : The statistical differences in the probability distributions for freeways indicates that applying a general standard to every urban highway could raise problems. This study has a limitation in identifying the specific causes of traffic congestion owing to the by physical relationships between individual vehicles. An investigation if vehicle trajectory data should be conducted to examine these aspects in further detail.

본 연구에서는 역량스펙트럼법을 이용해 얻어진 구조물의 성능점을 확률적으로 평가하는 방법을 제시하였다. ATC-40에 따라 역량스펙트럼법을 이용하여 4층 1경간 철골구조물의 성능점을 산정하였다. 요구스펙트럼을 이용하여 구조물의 성능한계를 초과하는지 여부를 분석하기 위해 구조부재의 소성변형각으로부터 정의되는 구조물의 성능한계에 대해 한계변위를 도출하였다. 또한 설계응답스펙트럼과 유사한 응답스펙트럼을 가지는 인공지진파 30개를 선정하여 스펙트럼 가속도에 따른 각 성능한계의 초과여부를 통해 fragility curve를 도출하였다. 관측된 초과확률을 이용하여 fragility curve를 도출하기 위해 maximum likelihood method를 사용하였다. 각 성능한계점에 대응하는 설계응답스펙트럼의 응답가속도값에서 성능한계점을 초과할 확률은 존재하는 것으로 확인되었다. 본 방식은 구조물의 성능점에 대해 지진파의 불확실성을 고려한 확률적 평가가 가능하고, 시간증분해석이 필요하지 않아 해석시간을 상당부분 단축시킬 수 있다는 장점이 있다.