This work presents the calibration of a model describing the speed-flow relationship on freeways and multilane highways in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. The calibrated model follows the recommendations made by the authors involved in the development of the model used by the Highway Capacity Manual-HCM 2010. The calibration used a sample of 788,122 observations, collected by 25 stations on four highways at São Paulo state: SP-348, SP-021, SP-280 and 270 SP. The analysis of the data showed that, as advocated by the HCM 2010, there is range of flows in which the average speed of the passenger cars remains constant and equal to the free flow speed. It was also found that the classification scheme used by HCM 2010, comprising freeways and multilane highways, is not adequate for highways in the state of São Paulo. A new classification scheme, which divides highways into urban or rural sections, is proposed. For these classes, representative values for the capacity were found, and the speed-flow relation was calibrated. The comparison between the two sets of curves produced showed that the average speed of the traffic stream on urban highways has an earlier and steeper drop than the observed on rural highways. In addition, the estimated values for the capacity C and for the speed at capacity CS for urban highways are lower compared to the estimated for rural highways. Compared to the model used by the HCM 2010, the main difference lies in the significantly lower values for BP, the traffic flow from which the average speed declines as the density of the traffic stream increases. Another important indication is that, although the capacity values are similar between the model used by the HCM 2010 and the calibrated model, the speed at capacity CS is higher at São Paulo state highways.
This paper develops and analyzes a multiclass traffic assignment model considering the flow-dependent passenger car equivalent (PCE) value of trucks based on the latest Highway Capacity Manual (HCM, 6th edition) and explores the properties of the proposed model to provide guidance on related planning applications. HCM discrete values of truck PCEs are fitted by power functions for combinations of link grades and lengths, which have been found to produce high coefficients of determination ( R2) in all cases. With the established fitting functions, the multiclass traffic assignment problem is formulated as a variational inequality problem and solved by an efficient method. The equilibrium link flow distribution is proved to exist but may not be unique. Numerical examples and discussions are presented to demonstrate the variance of the link flow distributions and the effect of such nonuniqueness on traffic planning applications. Several approaches are then provided to obtain the best range of solutions according to a congestion pricing design problem.
Since before the release of the Highway Safety Manual research has been indicating the need to incorporate mobility and control aspects to road safety analysis. The first part of this work developed and implement in an existing computational engine a signal timing optimization method that considers mobility, safety, and emissions measures simultaneously. A sensitivity analysis was conducted to provide insight on the practical effects and order of relevance of 20 key input variables. Mobility improvement performance usually coincides with emissions improvements, but sometimes at the expense of safety. The second part of this work investigated the relationship between hourly traffic density and crash rates on Brazilian expressways with different characteristics, based on a database containing over 20,000 crashes and more than 35 million traffic volume observations and. The resulting curves for urban expressways follow a U shape, with minimum values associated with LOS B to C, while the relationships for rural expressways were found to be continuously increasing, suggesting that low volume rural roads are safer than the higher volume ones. The analysis of other influencing factors revealed that nighttime conditions, weaving segments and urban multilane highways could be related to higher crash rates. The third part of the project extends the analysis to crash severity modeling, using an ordered response choice model. The framework that better fit this database led to the development of two different models: single-vehicle crashes (SV) and multiple-vehicle crashes (MV), since the factors that explain the severity of crashes varies widely between these models. For instance, guardrails and barriers proved to effectively reduce severity for SV crashes, for which runoffs are the most severe crash type. The unique database used in this study also allowed for an investigation of the influence of prevailing traffic conditions on crash severity, while still controlling for all other factors. The results suggested that multiple-vehicle crash severity is negatively related with traffic density, while single-vehicle crashes are more closely related to speed. The findings of this work have implications to policy and design decisions, and the produced equation could be incorporated to active traffic management (ATM) and HCM reliability analysis.
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