Modelling the area occupancy of major stream traffic

Abstract

The U-turns at median openings interrupt the movement of approaching through vehicles. This results an overall reduction in speed and flow along with increase in density. It is difficult to measure density from field observations and it doesn't consider any heterogeneous characteristics of traffic stream. Alternatively, area occupancy takes into account the flow, speed, and the dimension of each vehicle. Therefore area occupancy is a much better measure to study the performance of a road as compared to traffic density. This concept assumes that the vehicles must move at a uniform speed while entering and exiting the test section which may be practically impossible to maintain for all the vehicles. Therefore, to overcome this assumption, a modified technique has been proposed in this study. Besides, the change in area occupancy at various segments of slow down section across different U-turning traffic volumes has been assessed. Finally, a regression equation has been modelled to estimate area occupancy at every segment of road section corresponding to any U-turning volume. This model has been validated by comparing the estimated values with the values obtained from field data and the MAPE is found to be less than 10%. � 2018 Institute for Transport Studies in the European Economic Integration. All right reserved.