Abstract
The Southern Expressway plays a vital role in national road network in Sri Lanka. Vehicles on Expressways can travel at uniform speeds throughout their journey offering advantages on fuel consumption and reduced travel time. The expressways ensure a hassle free safe journey due to the minimum obstructions to the traffic. At present, all the interchanges along the Southern Expressway operate with manually operated toll gates. The efficiency of current toll gates was studied for the existing exit ramp lengths and it investigated whether their current efficiencies are sufficient for higher vehicle volume of the future traffic. To investigate the current toll gate efficiency on the capacity of Southern Expressway, the necessary data were collected from relevant organizations. From the collected data, peak days and peak hours were identified for each and every exit ramp of the Southern Expressway. By considering the peak hours, critical exit ramps were identified. After identifying critical exit ramps of the interchanges, traffic studies were conducted to obtain arrival and service rates in peak hours during the peak days. Then, after analyzing survey data, maximum queue lengths and longest individual delays for critical exit ramps along the Southern Expressway were found. Simultaneously the analysis was carried-out for a different number of gates. Finally, maximum queue lengths and longest individual delays were compared with existing ramp lengths, and shortcomings were identified. By using suitable growth rates for the Southern Expressway, future traffic conditions were predicted. Subsequently, by using the maximum vehicular queue lengths, individual delays that could occur in the future were computed. Hence, these values were used to analyze the effect of the capacity of Southern Expressway due to the present toll gate arrangement. Therefore, it was able to recommend suitable off ramp lengths considering queue lengths and deceleration lengths. Recommendations were also proposed for future improvements to the service rates at toll gates.
Highlights
The Southern Expressway is the first expressway to be built in Sri Lanka and it is an important link of the proposed expressway network
Aim of this study is to firstly investigate the efficiency of manually operated toll gates along the Southern Expressway and secondly to observe the impact on the capacity of interchanges which may limit the expressway potential in the future
The objective of this study is to investigate the impact of toll gates efficiency on the capacity of Southern Expressway
Summary
The Southern Expressway is the first expressway to be built in Sri Lanka and it is an important link of the proposed expressway network. It traverses from Kottawa to Matara (126 km) and the construction of the section from Kottawa to Pinnaduwa (Galle) was completed and operates as a dual carriageway expressway with 4lane facility when the study was conducted in 2013. Expressways have many advantages such as; reduced travel time, reduced traffic congestion, reduced transport delay costs, reduced fuel costs, attract private sector investors and thereby contribute to expand the job market and develop fisheries, agriculture, industries in the region, expand tourism presently confined to the coastal belt along Colombo-Galle-Matara, and enhance the value of land and property. In the Southern Expressway (between Kottawa and Galle) there are eight interchanges namely; Kottawa (Makumbura), Kahathuduwa, Gelanigama, Dodangoda, Welipanna, Kurundugahahatakma, Baddegama, and Pinnaduwa (Galle). Southern Expressway has shortened the journey time from Galle to Colombo to one hour. Since manually operated toll gates are installed and with increased traffic, it is intended to observe whether their efficiency is adequate to handle higher vehicle volumes
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