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A structural model for urban arterial road is proposed. It describes the road traffic dynamics in a disaggregated way. The structural model mainly includes: (1) a link traffic model that tracks the traffic waves cyclically. Traffic waves within each cycle are captured by three characteristic points. These points are formed by the encounter of different traffic waves. (2) a proportional line model which is used to split the overall outflow into different turning flow. The model is derived directly from first-in-first-out (FIFO) principle. (3) a spillover component that deals with channelized section queue overflow and (4) a traffic flow performance index component that outputs macroscopic and microscopic level indexes. These indexes include delay, stops, queue length and vehicle trajectory, travel time. The former three can be used in traffic flow optimization and the latter two are valuable in vehicle emission evaluation. Simulation results show that with the increasing of numerical resolution, traditional CTM model gradually converges to our model.

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Abstract: Gridlock is an extreme traffic state where vehicle cannot move at all. This research studies the development of gridlock by theoretical and numerical analysis. It is shown that the development of gridlock can be divided into several stages. The core of the development is the evolution of congestion loop. A congestion loop is comprised of a number of consecutively connected spillover links. The evolution of a congestion loop always tends to be stable, i.e. the state of all related links tends to be identical.. Under the stable condition, traffic states of all links are identical. A novel concept, “virtual signal” is proposed to describe the queue propagation and spillover during the stabilization. Simulation results show that congestion propagates in an accelerated way. The prevention of the first congestion loop is crucial. The achieved results have potential use for future network traffic control design and field applications

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Microtremor measurement is a precise and applicable technique for evaluating structural dynamic characteristics and vulnerability index of historical buildings. In this research a historical citadel in Iran has been considered. Karim Khan Citadel (Arg-e Karim Khan) is a huge masonry structure which has been built in the 17th century in Shiraz, Iran. The plan of this building has a rectangular shape and has a circular tower in each corner. The height of each three story circular tower is 14 m and the height of walls between each two towers is 12 m. One of these towers has been swerved and for preventing its collapse, concrete was injected to the foundation of this tower. To study seismic behavior and vulnerability of the swerved tower and compare it with other straight tower, microtremor measurements were performed. Measurements were done on the center of each tower and its basement simultaneously. For determining natural frequency and damping ratio of each tower, Floor Spectral Ratio (FSR) and Random Decrement Method (RDM) were used, respectively. Results show that the natural frequency and damping ratio of the swerved tower are 1.9 Hz and 1.55 % while dynamic parameters of the straight tower are 2.12 Hz and 3.86 %, respectively. Also the towers frequencies are very different to the site frequency (4.18 Hz), therefore the resonance phenomenon isn’t probable. In addition, the vulnerability indexes of the swerved and straight towers were calculated 131.31 and 76.9, respectively, which shows that the swerved tower is more vulnerable.

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The motorcycle is considered as one of the most applicable transportation modes for different types of trips in Iran. According to the report by Iran Police Department in 2011, almost 25% of all crash fatalities are related to the motorcycle riders and their passengers. The objective of this study is to identify the most important factors that contribute to the fault of motorcyclists involved in crashes. This is done by using the Classification And Regression Trees (CART) model to differentiate between at-fault and not-at-fault cases. The results show that the most important factor in determining at-fault probability of motorcyclists is the collision type. According to this fact, the probability of rear-end collision is the highest, while the probability of side collisions is the lowest. The importance of other factors is variable considering the collision type. In the case of rear-end collisions, the passengers characteristics and the age of the rider are the most important factors. However, in the case of side collisions, lighting condition and area type (in both urban and rural roads) are the most important. Finally, it is suggested that, training of riders can reduce rear-end collisions as well as installing systems that warn drivers when they are close enough to motorcycles in side collisions.