Optimizing Traffic Operation in Designing Specific Upgrades

Abstract

Transport forms one of the primary needs in all categories of the population in modern society; it is of paramount concern for traffic engineers, transport planners, and policy makers to understand and evaluate the quality of service being provided by the transport facilities designed by them. This paper presents an investigation in profile geometric design and traffic flow operation on two-lane two-way highways and provides analyses that will help in a better understanding of traffic operation on these facilities to select the optimum profile configuration. The effects of influencing parameters consisting of grade, length of grade, traffic composition, and traffic volume are evaluated and finally a systematic procedure to evaluate flow rate under the base condition is presented. Finally, based on these achievements an algorithm is introduced to select optimum Finished Ground of profile view. Results show that the percentage of heavy vehicles has a contributing effect on traffic operation so that the optimum profile configuration is incredibly affected by this factor. Source data have been obtained from Highway Capacity Manual (HCM) as a pioneer document in respect of quantifying the concept of capacity for a transport facility.