A definitive mathematical model of traffic flow has remained elusive. The difficulty with modeling any traffic system lies in the most variable and least predictable system component: the human automobile driver. TARA (Traffic and Road Analysis) is an innovative method of estimating the performance of a two lane rural highway traffic system. TARA is a software package that uses both Psychology and Fuzzy Logic to accurately model the behaviour of human drivers on a road network in order to estimate the Passing Hazard Index. This paper describes a project that analyzed the effect of increasing the truck length from 25m to 31m on passing opportunities on a typical Canadian rural highway. Traffic and site specific data was measured in the field through traffic counts and physical measurements of the road characteristics. Driving procedures and vehicle characteristics data were collected from literature. The traffic flow model used was TARA, Traffic and Road Analysis. The baseline Passing Hazard Index for 25 m trucks running at 105 km/hr was estimated. The scenario was then changed: truck length was increased to 31 m and the number of trucks was reduced by 18%; truck speed was kept constant at 105 km/h. The Passing Hazard Index was estimated for the new scenario. The results were compared to baseline results. The procedure was repeated for a range of truck speeds. The paper reports in detail the following: 1) Effect of increasing the truck length from 25m to 31 m on the average pass time 2) The effect on passing time of truck speeds 3) The cumulative time spent passing the various trucks modeled 4) The impact of driver behaviour on the results.
Estimation of Passing Hazard for a Two Lane Highway
Second International Conference on Transportation and Traffic Studies (ICTTS ) ; 2000 ; Beijing, China
2000-07-12
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
Estimation of Passing Hazard for a Two Lane Highway
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