Heavy Vehicle Management: Restriction Strategies

Abstract

Abstract: Road freight transport is considered as an important aspect of the Australian economy. Due to the operational characteristics (e.g. acceleration/deceleration, manoeuvrability) and physical specifications (e.g. length, size) of heavy vehicles, they impose negative impacts on surrounding traffic. These negative impacts include increasing traffic congestion, reducing traffic safety and increasing air and noise pollution. The negative impacts imposed by heavy vehicles would be intensified at arterial roads due to the presence of traffic lights when heavy vehicles have to decelerate at the red light, stop and then accelerate again. Considering the negative impacts of heavy vehicles on their surrounding traffic, suitable management strategies should be implemented to accommodate the increase in number of heavy vehicles. A typical method of managing heavy vehicle movements is through implementing alternative heavy vehicle restriction strategies. The main focus of this paper is to address the influence of heavy vehicle space restriction strategies for different classes of heavy vehicles on traffic congestion. In this research heavy vehicles have been classified into three classes including Rigid, Heavy Combination and Multi Combination. The road section that is used in this research is a section of Princes Highway in Melbourne, Australia. This section is 8.8 km long and 13 signalised intersections exist within that distance. To ensure accurate evaluation of the restriction strategies, VISSIM traffic simulation software is used. The study area is modelled in VISSIM. Afterwards, the restriction strategies are applied to the VISSIM model where certain classes of the heavy vehicles will be banned to use the road during the peak period. Four different heavy vehicle restriction strategies are applied in this research. The first strategy is having no restriction for heavy vehicles. The second strategy will apply restrictions on the multi combination class only. The third strategy will apply restrictions on both multi combination and heavy combination classes. The fourth strategy will restrict all classes of heavy vehicles. The effects of each restriction strategy on different traffic measurements will be evaluated at different heavy vehicle compositions. Restricting all heavy vehicles was deemed the most efficient restriction strategy in terms of the traffic performance measures used in this study.