Operational Performance and Speed–Flow Relationships for Basic Managed Lane Segments

Abstract

Managed lane facilities, including high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes, high-occupancy toll lanes, and express lanes, have become attractive tools for managing today's transportation system. Although managed lanes, specifically, HOV lanes, have existed for several decades, there has been little documentation of their traffic flow behaviors. Because these facilities tend to take on a variety of configurations, including different numbers of managed lanes and separation types from abutting general purpose lanes, transportation engineers should understand the traffic flow differences among facility types. An understanding of the interaction between managed lanes and parallel general purpose lanes is also needed for assessing the performance of managed lanes. A study was done to investigate the performance and traffic flow behavior of managed lane facilities at sites across the country. Traffic flow behavior for five facility types, based on separation type and number of lanes, was analyzed. Factors such as frictional impact on the managed lane—caused by poor performance of the general purpose lanes and slow vehicle effects on managed lane facilities where passing is prohibited—were considered in development of a set of speed–flow curves for each of the five basic facility types. These speed–flow relationships are expressed similarly to basic freeway segments in the Highway Capacity Manual and can be readily incorporated into the manual for predicting the performance of combined general purpose and managed lane facilities.