CAPACITY ASSESSMENT OF URBAN ROADS UNDER DIVERSE TRAFFIC STIPULATION

Abstract

In India, condition of traffic due to various kind of vehicles manoeuvring with different lane behaviour and driver behaviour resulting in supremely heterogeneous nature due to their static and dynamic features. Currently the traffic on the road rises rapidly and traffic volume overdoes normal limit. Study of several features of highway traffic is essentially required for preparation, design and manoeuvre of roadway facilities. For the improved vehicular road traffic it needs better roadway structure with greater capacity. An intension of this work is to analyze capacity for urban roads in heterogeneous condition. For the capacity estimation it is relatively tough to estimate traffic volume on the road. The problem of measuring flow may addressed by using Dynamic PCU values. The Capacity of urban roads is find out by green shield model and the results are compared with Microscopic simulation model. The sudden increase in width of lane on the road is checked and result shows that with the increase in road width Capacity of road also increases. A new concept to estimate the passenger car unit PCU of different types of vehicles under mixed traffic conditions is presented. It utilizes the area, as opposed to only the length, and speed of a vehicle. Data were collected at ten sections of two-lane roads in different parts of India. The width of carriageway this term is commonly used in India for the total width of the paved surface of a road excluding its shoulders ranged from 5.5 to 8.8 m. All vehicles were divided into nine different categories and their PCU’s were estimated at each road section. It was found that the PCU for a vehicle type increases linearly with the width of carriageway. This is attributed to the greater freedom of movement on wider roads and therefore a greater speed differential between a car and a vehicle type. The capacity of a two-lane road also increases with total width of the carriageway and the relationship between the two follows a second-degree curve. This relationship is used to derive the adjustment factors for substandard lane widths and the results are compared with literature.