Copyright © 2011 Chang-qiao Shao. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Based on the stochastic concept for freeway capacity, the procedure of capacity estimation is developed. Due to the fact that it is impossible to observe the value of the capacity and to obtain the probability distribution of the capacity, the product-limit method is used in this paper to estimate the capacity. In order to implement estimation of capacity using this technology, the lifetime table based on statistical methods for lifetime data analysis is introduced and the corresponding procedure is developed. Simulated data based on freeway sections in Beijing, China, were analyzed and the results indicate that the methodology and procedure are applicable and validated.