In traffic engineering, the degree of saturation of an intersection (typically under traffic signal control) or road is a measure of how much demand it is experiencing compared to its total capacity.
The degree of saturation (%) is a ratio of demand to capacity on each approach to the junction, with a value of 100% meaning that demand and capacity are equal and no further traffic is able to progress through the junction. Values over 85% are typically regarded as suffering from traffic congestion, with queues of vehicles beginning to form. The term practical reserve capacity (PRC) is often used to refer to the available spare capacity at a junction. A negative PRC indicates that the junction is over capacity.
Famous quotes containing the words degree and/or saturation:
“I’ve always credited the private detective with a high degree of omniscience. Or is that only true in rental fiction?”
—John Paxton (1911–1985)
“In the twentieth century, death terrifies men less than the absence of real life. All these dead, mechanized, specialized actions, stealing a little bit of life a thousand times a day until the mind and body are exhausted, until that death which is not the end of life but the final saturation with absence.”
—Raoul Vaneigem (b. 1934)