Senior design project featured (click to view)
NBC Channel 5 news story: Southern Methodist University students focus their project on making the intersection of Fitzhugh and Travis streets in Dallas safer for pedestrians. Senior Design team Andrew Brunts, Hailey Phelps, and David Smith built a simulation of Fitzhugh Avenue traffic to evaluate configuration alternatives for a neighborhood improvement organization.
The stories of three Senior Design projects from the clients’ point of view, including North Texas Food Bank, Texas Department of Transportation, and Southwest Airlines:
Client: CEE Prof. Abdelghani
Team: Nora Shora, Laura Tatsch
Faculty advisor: Barr Year: 2006
Documents: Final report (Word), final presentation (PPT)
Many cities across the world have experienced, and are currently experiencing, increased traffic on highways and urban networks. At the same time, roads and highways have a limited capacity and are only capable of transporting a limited number of travelers. An increase in the number of travelers has increased all of the following factors associated with travel: travel time, number of stops, travel costs, delays, air pollution, accidents, and noise level.
Road pricing is one tactic used as an effective demand management strategy to reduce traffic congestion and improve performance during peak periods in many cities. In our simulation model of Knoxville, TN we added tolls to certain roads in the network in order to acquire data that would help us distinguish whether changing tolls during peak hours would improve average travel time. Read more…
Client:
Team: Ava Damri, Calvin Smellage, Al Zinkand
Faculty advisor: Dr. Barr Year: 2009
Documents: Final report (Word), final presentation (PPT)
Our team examines the evacuation of six cities in the Gulf Freeway area stretching from Galveston in the south, to League City in the north. Any model created to solve the problem of evacuating a large number of people in a short time would need to account for real world complexities, such as multiple on-ramps, carrying capacities of highways, and the time required to close on-ramps in an emergency situation. Read more…
Client: SMU Parking Department
Team: Conner Huckaby, Katelyn Pratt, Sarah Rives
Faculty: Prof. Richard Barr Year: 2007
Documents: final report, final presentation
SMU will finish the construction of the Binkley parking garage in the summer of 2008. This new facility will open 850 new parking spaces on campus. However, the Binkley garage opening will cause new traffic troubles on campus because this parking structure is located kiddy-corner to Moody Garage, which has 830 parking spaces.
In the 2008 fall football season, SMU could see full parking facilities due to the combination of student, faculty, and visitor parking. Currently, SMU expects a car at the top of Moody garage to take 45 minutes to exit campus. But this 45 minute benchmark was calculated without taking into consideration the new Binkley garage. If both garages are full, how will traffic exit campus? Furthermore, how fast can both garages empty out? Is there a way to route traffic through campus in order for individual cars to exit campus quickly and with as little blockage and waiting time as possible? Read more…