Abstract
Pavement surface deformations have a significant effect on speed profile of vehicles and traffic flow conditions. These deformations limit driving properties and increase vehicle operation and maintenance costs. Additionally, they cause many problems such as accidents, slower movement speeds, capacity loss and severe discomfort states. There are many factors having an effect on road capacities and they vary according to different road and traffic flow conditions. In this study, it is aimed to investigate and develop models to estimate shockwave and bottleneck forming, capacity loss and speed reduction, which occurred on examined road links caused by pavement deformations. For the prediction of road capacity, flow–density (q–k) relationship, bottleneck and shockwave analysis methods were used. In the scope this study, deformed road links were divided into three sections; Section A – before deformation zone, Section B – deformation zone, and Section C – after deformation zone. All three sections were investigated and empirical results were obtained. According to analysis results, it was found that pavement surface deformations have a negative effect on the level of road service capability. Obtained results also showed that there are significant reductions in capacity relatively by up to 44 and 26% would result from surface deformations on deformed lanes and non-deformed adjacent lanes.
Highlights
Pavements are designed according to a predicted traffic carrying capacity for a designed service life (Ben-Edigbe, Ferguson 2005)
There are many factors having an effect on road capacities and they vary according to different road and traffic flow conditions
It is aimed to investigate and develop models to estimate shockwave and bottleneck forming, capacity loss and speed reduction, which occurred on examined road links caused by pavement deformations
Summary
Pavements are designed according to a predicted traffic carrying capacity for a designed service life (Ben-Edigbe, Ferguson 2005). In another similar study, Ben-Edigbe (2010) has shown that adverse conditions have significant impacts on the level of road service He found a significant reduction in speed by up to 50% and in traffic flow by up to 20% would result from pavement surface deformations. As can be seen from the previous study results, there is an important need for empirical studies to measure and model the extent of speed reduction and capacity loss caused by pavement surface deformations Because, they only focused on examining the forming reasons, capacity loss, and speed reduction effects of road surface deformations (Wang 2000, Ben-Edigbe 2005; Ben-Edigbe, Ferguson 2005; Nejad, Zakeri 2011; Ben-Edigbe, Mashros 2012; Aydın et al 2013). The moving bottleneck cases of vehicles caused by the road surface deformations were observed and analysed by considering related parameters
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