Southwestern University - Traffic Problem
I. Company Background
Southwestern University (SWU) is located in Stephenville, Texas. They have recently hired a new well-known football coach and because of this, they are expecting an increase in their fan base for this sport. Their season ticket sales have gone up, meaning more revenues, however, this also means increase in customer complaints due to traffic problems whenever there’s a game.
Dr. Marty Starr, SWU’s president, has asked University Planning Committee to see how they can solve this problem. Based on traffic projections, Dr. Starr would like to have sufficient capacity so that 35,000 cars per hour can be accommodated to travel from the newly-built stadium to the interstate highway. Anticipating this problem, some of the current streets leading from the university to the interstate highway were transformed to one-way streets on a temporary basis, since the problem will only occur after the games. This will be done with police officers directing traffic after each game.
Alexander Lee, SWU Planning Committee member did a quick check and stated that 33,000 cars per hour can be accommodated according to the road capacity diagram. With node 1 alone, 33,000 cars per hour can pass through, while nodes 2, 3 and 4 is 35,000 cars per hour and the number of cars that can pass by nodes 5, 6 and 7 is much greater than the former. Therefore, he suggests that based on the current capacity, 33,000 cars per hour can be accommodated. He also suggested that they should recommend to the city manager the widening of some of the streets to increase capacity of an additional 2,000 cars per hour. He recommends the road widening based on which ever Path is cheapest.
If the city manager opts not to expand the Paths, traffic problems will still be manageable but a nuisance to SWU football game patrons. It is believed, from past experience that as long as street capacity is within 2,500 cars per hour, the problem will not be too...
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