The purpose of this module is to import historical transactional data and simulate traffic queues. Users can customize a facility so that a variety of lanes and configurations can be explored and tested before a final result is selected.
A Facility consists of several Lanes. Each Lane can be configured to be a different type. The valid lane types are as follows:
- GEN. GENeral purpose lane that accepts cash, credit, and transponders.
- CC. Credit Card only lane.
- ETC. Electronic Toll Collection Lane for open road tolling. Users are not required to stop in this lane and are billed from their transponders or later by mail
- CASH. Cash-only lanes
- PBM. Pay-by-mail.
- PMB. Pay-by-mail. Existing vendor uses this convention.
Transactions are distributed to lanes based on rational choice theory, and assume that vehicles will use the shortest lane to which they are qualified. To create a transaction the following information is required:
- Datetime information about when the transaction is loaded into the
Facility - pmtType. Payment type, e.g. credit card, pay-by-mail, cash, etc.
- Axel. Axle count for determining the fare and that non-standard axle counts require more work from manual toll collectors.
- trxID. Transaction ID used to track the transaction through the various queues in this process.
See the sample test simulation in the library for setting up a simulation. Possible outputs include a video file demonstrating the length of queues in various lanes and an csv file with the total queues and queues for each lane.
This module includes a test suite with a sample Facility, Lanes and Transactions. All transaction processing time calculations use a normal distribution, so the estimated completion times are based on a 99% likelihood of completion. As a result there is a very low probability that tests will fail, so in some rare instances it may require running tests multiple times to pass.
The utility class provides access to some common methods used by the various other classes