Sustainable operational lane capacity for highways

Abstract

The concept of capacity plays a fundamental role within the transportation profession since it is applied in planning, design and operational condition of virtually every road. This paper reports on an in-depth statistical analysis has been carried out for 160 sites across the UK strategic motorway network and 32 sites for trunk roads data to produce a reliable estimation of sustainable lane capacity. Geometric parameters and traffic conditions impacting on capacity have been taken into consideration. The formulation of capacity for motorways and trunk roads has then been produced. The deviation between the link capacities has been found to be significant. It is also found that a number of geometric and locational factors are the explanation to the variations. It is concluded that the average sustainable capacity of a motorway lane is 1780 vehicles/h (2000 passenger car unit per hour with a standard deviation of 130 vehicles/h). The trunk road capacity is evaluated as 1520 vehicles/h with a standard deviation of 170 vehicle/h.