Highways In India Research Articles

Impact of Roadside Friction on Travel Speed and LOS of Rural Highways in India

Substantial amount of money has been invested by Government of India and several State Governments to improve the level of service of various categories of roads in India. Roads have been widened and strengthened, surface condition has been improved but Level of Service has not been improved as expected because of various socio-economic factors. One of the important factors has been the presence of side friction along Indian rural highways. Existence of road-side markets at regular interval along rural highways is very common in India. These market areas act as pseudo bottleneck points and confusion zones to the through traffic of highways. Interaction among fast moving vehicles, pedestrian and non-motorized local vehicles is very unique phenomenon. Literature review reveals that not much work has been carried out to understand impact of side friction on travel speed and Level of Service. An attempt has been made in the present work to quantify the impact of roadside friction on travel speed and LOS of Indian rural highways. Based on data collected from three study sections, speed-flow curves were developed for various side friction levels and five threshold values for LOS are suggested considering operational speed and freedom of maneuver as measure of effectiveness.

Traffic Flow Characteristics for Multilane Highways in India

The traffic composition on multilane highways in India comprises of a wide range of vehicles in terms of their type, size, engine power, manoeuvring ability, etc. This mix of vehicles with different operating capabilities results in a broad range of speed. Slow moving or non-motorized vehicles occupy the lower ranges of speed spectrum whereas the new technology cars dominate the higher ranges. To understand the real traffic behaviour, it requires quantification of some of the basic traffic flow characteristics such as Speed, Flow, Density and Occupancy through which the capacity can be derived. The radical changes in road network and vehicle technology have resulted in variations in speed-flow characteristics and subsequently road user costs. The problems arise out of three major aspects associated with several types of vehicles in the traffic mix i.e. speed and acceleration capabilities of vehicles, their manoeuvres and lateral clearance requirements within the right of way. The main objective of the present study is to estimate the basic traffic flow parameters for six lane divided traffic stream under study and to evolve speed-flow relationships for six lane divided carriageways for different vehicle types. In the present study, linear models have been developed for speed-flow equations for different vehicles on each lane of selected road sections of six-lane divided carriageway.

Effect of traffic composition on capacity of multilane highways

Mixed traffic has always been a major concern in all studies related to estimation of capacity of a highway in developing nations like India. The problem of mixed traffic is generally circumvented by making use of passenger car equivalency factors for different categories of vehicles and converting them into equivalent number of Passenger Cars Units (PCU). However, capacity is also required in terms of vehicles per hour, particularly for quick estimation of volume-to-capacity ratio on a highway. The present study investigates the effect of traffic mix on capacity of four-lane, six-lane divided highways in India. All vehicles on a highway are divided into five categories namely standard car, big car, heavy vehicle, motorized three-wheelers and motorized two-wheelers, and effect of each vehicle type on capacity of the highway is evaluated. The VISSIM software is calibrated and used to generate the traffic operations based on field data using capacity as the measure of performance. Speed-flow curves are developed to find simulated capacity values for different combinations of standard car and one of the remaining four types of vehicles in the traffic stream. The results are finally combined to propose the generalized equations to determine capacity when all or few of the five categories of vehicles are simultaneously present on a highway.

Highway Capacity Research on Inter-urban Highways in India

Many countries in the world have developed their own highway capacity manuals incorporating influence of local conditions on traffic flow behavior. India has also taken a giant step towards this goal. This paper presents the status of highway capacity research in India on inter-urban highways including single lane, intermediate lane, two lane and multilane highways, expressways and freeways. It gives an overview of capacity related studies during last four decades and discusses the challenges before the researchers while developing the highway capacity manual for Indian conditions, particularly due to mixed nature of traffic and non-lane based movement of vehicles on Indian highways.

Calibration of safety performance function for crashes on inter-city four lane highways in India

AbstractThere is a significant need to improve the highway safety during roadway planning, design and operations in developing countries like India. To receive appropriate consideration, safety needs to be dealt objectively within the transportation planning and highway design processes. Lack of available tools is a deterrent to quantify safety of a transportation facility during the planning or highway design process. The objective of this paper is to develop safety performance functions considering various elements involved in the planning, design and operation of a section on four-lane National Highway (NH)-58 located in the state of Uttarakhand, India. The mixed traffic on Indian multilane highways comes with a lot of variability within, ranging from different vehicle types to different driver characteristics. This could result in variability in the effect of explanatory variables on crashes across locations. Hence, explanatory variables for highway segment safety analysis considered were geometric ch...

Issues in Indian Cities Due to Increasing Coverage of Highways: A Case Study of The Sriperumpudur – Poonamalle Stretch in NH4

In 1947, during the year of independence, India’s national highway network was approximately 23,000 km. In 1997, national highways had a total length of 34,298 km. As of July 2013 India has multiplied thrice the distance covered by national highways (NH) connecting all the major cities and state capitals. By end of 2017, it is planned that the national highway network should be at 85000 km (12th Five Year Plan, 2012-17).
 Though it is an improvement in the infrastructure, we have to agree that there are many cons in the process. The highways have brought concentric expansion and appearance of sub-centers all along major road intersections. The land-use changes caused by these highways have converted the metropolises to megalopolises, hamlets emerging to bigger cities. The highways are aimed to provide better transport and to link one place to another in a fast mode. “You can start with land use, or you can start with transportation; in either case, the basic feedback leads inevitably to a hierarchy of central places and transportation links connecting them” [Moore and Thorsnes, 1994]. Land-use being the first to impact cities, eventually causes impacts on natural resources and also communities, livelihood, health, safety, etc. The progression of the urban landscape can be considered from a hybrid perception where diverse paradigms were focused in different periods. It is the need of the hour to integrate all the essential paradigms.
 This paper provides an overview of the issues and challenges caused by development of highways in India. Rather than covering every aspect of highways, it primarily focuses on those areas that are important from the users’ point of view. The paper first reviews the changes in Indian cities due to increasing coverage of highways, followed by a discussion on issues such as Land use split, settlement isolation, identity loss, to mention a few. Building on this background, the paper proposes further researches for the betterment of life in cities affected by Highways.

MICROSCOPIC TRAFFIC SIMULATION USING VANETS TRAFFIC SIMULATOR VISSIM

The growth of motorization on highways in India has so far been of 2-wheeler and 3-wheeler variety, imposing negative impacts on both bus and car transport. It has also resulted in highly heterogeneous traffic conditions with varying static and dynamic characteristics of different types of vehicles. Since system is too complex and analyses needs microscopic simulation model. Stochastic models have better quality than deterministic and microscopic nature of traffic simulation delivers psycho-physical behavior of vehicular interaction. Present work signifies the applicability of VANET Traffic simulator VISSM. Therefore, present study makes the use of traffic simulation to understand the nature of mixed traffic by discrete, stochastic and time-step based analysis.

Laboratory and Field Investigation of Mechanistic Properties of Foamed Asphalt Recycled Base Course Materials for High Volume Pavements in India

The quality of cold in-place recycling (CIR) is strongly dependent on the capability of proper laboratory investigation and design, and quality control during construction. The objective of this study was to evaluate the quality of the first major foamed asphalt CIR recycled layer in India, laid on a national highway in India. A nonnuclear density gauge (NNDG) and a portable seismic properties analyzer (PSPA) were utilized to determine the density and stiffness of the foamed asphalt recycled layer. In addition, cores and material samples from the recycled layer were also tested in the laboratory for density and stiffness using dynamic modulus tests and the seismic method. The results of tests were related to material properties and critical factors influencing the performance-related properties were identified. Comparisons between laboratory and field sample data were made. Foaming temperature and gradation control of crusher dust were identified as parameters requiring tight control to achieve the required quality. The detrimental effects of excess blending of cement were also revealed. The NNDG and the PSPA were found to be capable of identifying poor quality areas both in midsections and at joints, and to be capable of monitoring the quality of recycled layer.

Critical Emissions from the Largest On-Road Transport Network in South Asia

One of the major requirements of air quality management for a particular region or country is to understand the sources of emissions, particularly those from the dominant sectors. The on-road transport sector is one of the most important sources of pollutant emissions, as it is directly linked to economic growth, and the current study focuses on India, a nation that is currently experiencing very rapid development. In view of this, the present work develops an inventory of on-road vehicular emissions at 0.5° × 0.5° resolution (approx. 55 km) for a region in India, where a technologically-based dynamic emissions factor method has been used to for the last 20 years. This new inventory can not only provide improved estimates of emissions in recent years but also highlight the relative contribution of various vehicles, based on age, to the total emissions produced by the transport sector. In addition, inventories of the major air pollutants for on-road vehicles in India are developed for the base year of 2009 for the first time in this work. The total emissions from the transport sector are estimated to be 5.4 Tg/yr for NOx, 10.2 Tg for CO, 693.3 Gg/yr for PM and 5.54 Tg/yr for VOC, 240,000 kilometers of national, state and major highways in India are used to achieve a better spatial allocation of gridded on-road emissions, along with a vehicular density map in a GIS environment. The emissions data presented in this work will not only help in improving the simulated distribution of air pollutants in chemical transport models, but can also be used for air quality management in planning related mitigation strategies.

Highway urbanization and Land conflicts: the challenges to decentralization in India

Much of the urban growth in developing countries is taking place along infrastructure corridors that connect cities. the villages along these corridors are frenzied and contested sites for the consolidation and conversion of agricultural lands for urban uses. the scale of changes along these corridors is larger than the political jurisdiction of local governments, and new regional institutions are emerging to manage land consolidations at this corridor scale. this article compares two inter-urban highways in India and the hybrid regional institutions that manage them: the BangaloreMysore corridor, regulated by parastatals, and the Pune-nashik corridor, by cooperatives. It traces the emergence of parastatals and cooperatives to the turn of the twentieth century, the ways in which these old institutions are being reworked to respond to the contemporary challenges of highway urbanization, and the winners and losers under these new institutional arrangements. I use the term “negotiated decentralization” to more accurately capture the back-and-forth negotiations between local, regional and state-level actors that leads to context-specific regional institutions like the parastatals and cooperatives.

Total and abrupt elimination of a population of Egyptian Vultures (Neophron percnopterus) on Delhi - Agra highway in India

The present work is to highlight the threats being faced by the Egyptian Vultures Neophron percnopterus (Linnaeus, 1758) in its original area including Mathura district. An isolated population of Egyptian Vultures was seen in 2007-08 spread over an area of 20-30 Kilometers home range. Actually, scores of Egyptian vultures were seen airborne gyrating in the skies at low height on the outskirts of Mathura city towards Delhi. Astonishingly, in 2008, another group of 40-50 Egyptian Vultures was seen feeding on 2-3 carcasses of Cattle on left hand side of Agra-Delhi National highway in September, 2008 towards Delhi. However, a visit in April, 2011 revealed a fatal fact, as all these birds of this population were certainly eclipsed in a short span of 3-4 years. Neither the airborne group nor the “Kosi-Kalan” village road side group was traceable. So much so, not a single bird could be sighted. In conclusion, it is boldly inferred over here that Egyptian Vultures are already in the brink of near extinctions as of in 2013, only one bird was traced on Mathura-Agra Highway.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/ijls.v8i1.8084

Passenger Car Units at Different Levels of Service for Capacity Analysis of Multilane Interurban Highways in India

Passenger car units (PCU) of different types of vehicles are required to convert a mixed traffic stream into a homogeneous equivalent, and thereby to express the mixed traffic flow in terms of equivalent number of passenger cars. Earlier studies have reported that PCU for a vehicle is dynamic in nature and changes with traffic volume and proportional share of a vehicle type in the traffic stream. The present study provides PCU values for different types of vehicles typically found on interurban multilane highways in India at different levels of service (LOS). Traffic simulation model VISSIM is used to generate the traffic flow and speed data for conditions that are difficult to obtain from field observations. Important VISSIM parameters are first calibrated to reflect mixed traffic flow behavior and then the software is used to draw the speed-volume relationships for cars and one of the remaining four categories of vehicles in the traffic stream. The proportion of second category of the vehicle was also varied to observe its effects on PCU values. Finally, PCU values are suggested for different type of vehicles at different LOS and for different traffic composition on four-lane and six-lane divided highways.

Exploring Fly Ash Utilization in Construction of Highways in India

Exploring Fly Ash Utilization in Construction of Highways in India

Relationship between Pavement Roughness and Distress Parameters for Indian Highways

AbstractThe present study demonstrates the relationships between pavement roughness and distress parameters like potholes, raveling, rut depth, cracked areas, and patch work. The pavement distress data collected on four national highways in India using a network survey vehicle (NSV) are used to develop linear and nonlinear regression models between roughness and distress parameters. Analysis of variance of these models indicated that nonlinear relation is better than a linear model. R2 value, root mean square error (RMSE), and mean absolute relative error (MARE) also supported nonlinear models. An artificial neural network (ANN), which is an advanced technique of modeling, is also used in the present study to model pavement roughness with distress parameters. A network with five input nodes, 15 hidden nodes, and one output node is considered. The network was trained with 90% of the data and tested with remaining 10% data. Results of R2 and MSE showed that the neural network performed highly significantly ...

Self-Similar Behavior of Highway Road Traffic and Performance Analysis at Toll Plazas

Until recently, the Poisson process has been used to model internet and road traffic queues. It has been established that internet traffic exhibits self-similarity, which is very different from the Poisson process. Motivated by this, efforts have been made to examine whether road traffic is also self-similar. Earlier efforts in this direction indicate that road traffic is indeed self-similar. To substantiate this, this paper examines, by various methods, whether real time traffic on a busy national highway in India is self-similar. The results from this examination prove that the traffic observed on the highway is self-similar. This paper also presents a novel method based on percentiles for computing the Hurst parameter, which is an indicator for the intensity of self-similarity. The paper also validates the percentile method with two other existing methods. Additionally, the traffic at a toll plaza on the highway has been modelled as queueing system, and performance measures have also been computed, namely, mean queue length and busy period distribution. The numerical results clearly demonstrate that the analysis presented in this paper can be useful for improved designs of toll plazas.

Deterioration of Retro-Reflective Sheet Under Outdoor Weathering and Weather-O-Meter

More than one million road signs are installed over thousands of kilometers of highways in India. It is a matter of great concern that there is no strategy to assess their deterioration in terms of quality of retro reflective sheets under natural outdoor weathering and artificial accelerated weathering. The work reported in this paper is focused on how fast the deterioration of reflective sheets of different colors is occurring under natural weathering conditions in India. The deterioration is simulated with artificial weathering under Xenon-Arc chamber with known parameters of weather prevailing in India. This study will help in evaluating the performance of retro-reflective sheets in hours in weather-o-meter to same level of deterioration in the field in terms of days. Data for co-efficient of retro-reflectivity was collected for White, Yellow, Red, Orange, Green, and Blue Type III reflective sheets over a period of seven years in natural weather conditions of Delhi.The best-fit curves technique was ado...

A BRAWNY MULTICOLOR LANE DETECTION METHOD TO INDIAN SCENARIOS

Lane detection is an essential component of Advanced Driver Assistance System. The cognition on the roads is increasing day by day due to increase in the four wheelers on the road. The cognition coupled with ignorance towards road rules is contributing to road accidents. The lane marking violence is one of the major causes for accidents on highways in India. In this work we have designed and implemented an automatic lane marking violence detection algorithm in real time. The HSV color-segmentation based approach is verified for both white lanes and yellow lanes in Indian context. Various comparative experimental results show that the proposed approach is very effective in the lane detection and can be implemented in real- time. Index Terms: - Color segmentation; HSV; Edge orientation; connected components

Overtaking Behavior on Divided Highways Under Mixed Traffic Conditions

The acceleration and overtaking characteristics of different types of vehicles on four-lane divided highways in India are evaluated in this paper. The floating car method was used to record the time of different events in an overtaking process. It is observed that the shoulder condition (paved and unpaved) influences the acceleration behavior during overtaking. In the case of highways with paved shoulders, two-wheelers rarely overtook the test vehicle as they mostly used shoulder lane for their movement. An inverse correlation is observed between the overtaking speed and the acceleration rate. Graphs are plotted between the relative speed of the overtaking and overtaken vehicles against the overtaking time for flying overtaking.

Development of Congestion Cost Equations for Multilane Highways in India

Traffic congestion is a tremendous drain on the economy of any nation. Congestion imposes vehicle operating costs and time costs on the road user that are in addition to the normal costs for using the same road under uncongested conditions. Fuel cost, as the major share of the vehicle operating cost, and time cost are the two relevant parameters for assessing the influence of congestion; fuel consumption and time cost equations must be able to estimate congestion cost. This study assessed fuel consumption and travel time costs under congested conditions on multilane highways, including four-, six-, and eight-lane divided carriageways. Data were collected from fuel consumption experiments conducted under a congested state and from roadside surveys on the value of time for different types of road users, including both passengers and goods. With these data, the authors developed congestion cost equations for fuel and time costs for different vehicle types that can be used to calculate the effects of congestion on fuel and time costs of vehicles operating on multilane highways.

Random parameter models for accident prediction on two-lane undivided highways in India

Introduction Generalized linear modeling (GLM), with the assumption of Poisson or negative binomial error structure, has been widely employed in road accident modeling. A number of explanatory variables related to traffic, road geometry, and environment that contribute to accident occurrence have been identified and accident prediction models have been proposed. The accident prediction models reported in literature largely employ the fixed parameter modeling approach, where the magnitude of influence of an explanatory variable is considered to be fixed for any observation in the population. Similar models have been proposed for Indian highways too, which include additional variables representing traffic composition. The mixed traffic on Indian highways comes with a lot of variability within, ranging from difference in vehicle types to variability in driver behavior. This could result in variability in the effect of explanatory variables on accidents across locations. Random parameter models, which can capture some of such variability, are expected to be more appropriate for the Indian situation. Method The present study is an attempt to employ random parameter modeling for accident prediction on two-lane undivided rural highways in India. Three years of accident history, from nearly 200 km of highway segments, is used to calibrate and validate the models. Results The results of the analysis suggest that the model coefficients for traffic volume, proportion of cars, motorized two-wheelers and trucks in traffic, and driveway density and horizontal and vertical curvatures are randomly distributed across locations. Conclusions The paper is concluded with a discussion on modeling results and the limitations of the present study.