Determining of Appropriate Passenger Car Unit Values Due to a Change in Effective Width of Roadway

Abstract

Legitimately, the passenger car equivalent value is determined based on the type and width of the road as well as the traffic volume. Interestingly, the effective width of roadway often varies due to land topography conditions and level of side friction. Theoretically, the number of survey posts should be determined based on road geometric and environmental conditions because traffic volume is a reflection of the choice of speed. Unfortunately, due to limited funds, traffic volume, travel speed and ride friction surveys were carried out at 1 survey point. As a result. the recommendations for strategies and/or traffic management and engineering techniques could be bias. This study aims to calculate the impact of differences in the effective road width on the equivalent value of passenger cars using the Speed Method. For this reason, a speed survey was carried out on a number of arterial roads in the Kupang urban area. It was found that changes in the effective width of road lanes have a significant impact on changes in motorbike speed so that the use of passenger car equivalent value for motorcycle should be based on the result of field survey, instead of a standardized value as it was recommended by Indonesian Highway Capacity Guide