Highway Capacity and Level-of-Service Analysis

The underlying objective of traffic analysis is to quantify a roadway’s performance with regard to specified traffic volumes. This performance can be measured in terms of travel delay (as the roadway becomes increasingly congested) as well as other factors. The comparative performance of various roadway segments (which is determined from an analysis of traffic) is important because it can be used as a basis to allocate limited roadway construction and improvement funds. The purpose of this chapter is to apply the elements of uninterrupted traffic flow theory  to the practical field analysis of traffic flow and capacity on freeways, multilane highways, and two-lane highways.

 

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The main challenge of such a process is to adapt the theoretical formulations to the wide range of conditions that occur in the field. These diverse field conditions must be taken into account in a traffic analysis methodology, yet the methodology must remain theoretically consistent. capacity (qcap) is simply defined as the highest traffic flow rate that the roadway is capable of supporting. For applied traffic analysis, a consistent and reasonably precise method of determining capacity must be developed within this definition. Because it can readily be shown that the capacity of a roadway segment is a function of factors such as roadway type (freeway, multilane highway, or two-lane highway), free-flow speed (FFS), number of lanes, and widths of lanes and shoulders, the method of capacity determination clearly must account for a wide variety of physical and operational roadway characteristics.