Generally an urban freeway means a primary arterial which provides road users with a free-flow speed, except for ramp junctions during rush hours. However, most road users suffer from traffic congestion in the basic segments as well as in the ramp junctions of urban freeway during rush hours, because most road users prefer urban freeways to local roads in the urban areas. This study then intends to analyze lane traffic characteristics of urban freeway basic segments having more freight vehicles during rush hours, find the lane showing a high correlation with the segment speed between lane speeds, and finally suggest a segment-speed predictive model by the lane speed of urban freeway basic segments during rush hours.

Today travel demand continues to increase with spread of economic zones. Also, urban freeway plays an important role in intra-zone transportations as a major corridor in a big city. However, most of urban freeways experience a severe congestion with the excess of inflowing or outflowing traffic through freeway ramps. The purpose of this study is to identify the traffic characteristics, analyze the relationships between the traffic characteristics and finally construct the speed predictive models on the ramp junctions of urban freeway under the intelligent transportation system(ITS) settings. From the analyses of traffic characteristics following results were obtained: ⅰ) 24 hours average traffic characteristics flow, occupancy, speed under the ITS settings showed about 40%, 38%, 8.8% increase each on urban freeway junctions period when compared with that under the non-ITS settings each other. Free flow speed and traffic flow on the mainline sections of urban freeway under the ITS settings also showed about 20% and 17% increase when compared with that under the non-ITS, respectively. ⅱ) The upstream when compared speed( Su)and downstream occupancy( Od) were especially shown to have higher explanatory powers on the stable flow ramp junctions, but the upstream speed( Su) and downstream flow( Vd) were especially shown on the unstable flow ramp junctions of urban freeway under the ITS settings.ngs.ngs.

Today freeway is thought to be a very important transportation facility carrying tremendous traffic flow as the main corridor within the area of between the areas. However freeway is experiencing severe congestion and accidents by increased entrance ramp flow especially at peak time period. Ramp meters on the freeway entrance ramps that supply traffic to the freeway in a measured or appropriately regulated amount are needed for alleviating freeway congestion. Because ramp meters can be operated to discharge traffic at a measured or regulated rate thus maintaining more uniform speed on the mainline section maximizing the throughput to the freeway within the capacity of a downstream bottleneck and reducing the congestion related accidents. Thus the objectives in this study were to analyze the traffic characteristics on the freeway I-94 with ramp metering system before/after ITS technology in Detroit (Michigan) area compare shifts of the traffic characteristics on the freeway I-94 before/after ITS technology and finally suggest a better ramp metering strategy for the freeway system The following results were obtained: i)Flow occupancies and speeds on the mainline merge section of freeway were shown to be a big difference depending on the peak periods areas and directions based on the distribution of traffic flow characteristics on the freeway. ii)Reduced speed was shown to be more than 5 mph and ramp flow was also shown to be more than 240 vph at peak periods if there was the ramp metering system constructed on the freeway. iii)Ramp metering system was shown to be optimally operated on the freeway if ramp flow could be maximized within the range of over 900 vph and reduced occupancy could be also maximized by no more than 2 percent at peak periods. iv)The average flows on the freeway after the ITS technology were shown to be a decrease of over 20% depending on the peak periods areas and directions when compared with those flow on the freeway before the ITS technology. over 20% depending on the peak periods areas and directions when compared with those speeds on the freeway before the ITS technology. vi)The average metering rates on the freeway after the ITS technology were shown to be an increase of over 10% depending on the peak periods areas and directions when compared with those metering rates on the freeway before the ITS technology.