Results of studies on design speed limitations on urban streets of the Russian Federation

Abstract

Abstract The design speed is one of the fundamental characteristics that defines many technical requirements to an urban street as an engineering structure. Changed traffic conditions in the major cities of the Russian Federation, including the growth of motorization, continuing processes of formation of agglomeration zones, development of theoretical approaches to methods of substantiation of design speeds and others, require revision and update of requirements to design speeds of traffic on the urban streets and roads network. This article is dedicated to the research of practice of limitations established for vehicle speed on the urban street and road networks as one of the factors to be taken into account for determining design speeds. The research covered arterial roads, collector and local streets and roads in major and the largest cities located in the territory of the Russian Federation. The research and processing of obtained data were conducted with the use of general scientific methods and techniques of mathematical statistics. The research allowed to conduct data analysis and draw conclusions on the established current practice of determining design speeds taking into account specifics of traffic in the streets and roads referred to different functional classes. It has been concluded based on the research results that there is the necessity to update approaches to rationing of design speeds of vehicles on the urban streets, and recommendations have been given on differentiation of requirements to design speeds for artery streets and roads. The research results presented in the article can be used in substantiation of rationale of design speeds of vehicles under the conditions of design of new and reconstruction of existing streets in the cities of the Russian Federation.