Heavy vehicle effects on Florida freeways and multilane highways.

Details

• Creators:
  Washburn, Scott S. ; Ozkul, Seckin
• Corporate Creators:
  University of Florida. Dept. of Civil and Coastal Engineering
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  • Multilane highways
  • Freeways
  • Heavy vehicles
  • Traffic flow
  • Commercial vehicles
  • Highway capacity
  • Level of service
  • Passenger car equivalence
  • Trucks
  • Simulation
• Publication/ Report Number:
  BDK77 977-15
• Resource Type:
  Tech Report
• Geographical Coverage:
  Florida
• Corporate Publisher:
  Florida. Dept. of Transportation
• Abstract:
  The Florida Department of Transportation’s (FDOT) primary guide for conducting highway capacity and level of ; service analyses from planning through design is the Transportation Research Board’s Highway Capacity Manual (HCM). ; FDOT’s FREEPLAN and HIGHPLAN software programs utilize truck passenger car equivalency (PCE) values from the ; HCM to account for the effects of trucks on traffic flow operations. The PCE values in the HCM used for freeways and ; multilane highways are based on a study performed in the mid-1990s. Since that time, commercial truck performance ; technologies have changed. Furthermore, loading conditions are considerably different today, given the tremendous ; growth in freight movement. Additionally, the PCE values developed in that study were based strictly on simulation and ; a now outdated version of CORSIM (5.0). And finally, the PCE values taken from that study for inclusion in the HCM ; correspond to just a single “typical” truck (although the study considered multiple categories of trucks), which may not be ; representative of a typical truck in Florida, and accounting for just a single truck type may lead to considerable error in ; level of service results in some situations. Therefore, the objective of this project was to develop PCE values appropriate ; for commercial truck conditions on Florida freeways and multilane highways. The most prevalent truck types on Florida ; freeways and multilane highways were determined to be single unit, intermediate/interstate semi-tractor+trailer, and semitractor+double- trailer trucks. The CORSIM-NG simulation program was utilized to generate the traffic stream data for ; this study, as this program incorporates a more detailed truck acceleration model than other available simulation tools. In ; order to develop the PCE values, the methodology introduced into the literature by Sumner et al. was used. This ; methodology has also been utilized by others (e.g., Webster and Elefteriadou). Once the PCE calculations were run and ; the values were obtained for the three heavy vehicle types of interest, it was observed that PCE values generally increase ; with increases in proportion of grade, length of grade, traffic demand, free-flow-speed, and proportion of heavy vehicles. ; Conversely, the PCE values generally decrease as the number of lanes increases. Although it is difficult to directly ; compare the PCE values from this study to those of the HCM 2010 because the HCM values are much more generalized, ; for the same input conditions the PCE values from this study are generally slightly lower, which is largely due to the ; higher power-to-weight ratios of the trucks used in this study and the more detailed vehicle dynamics modeling
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• Format:
  PDF
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/26661/dot_26661_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 2.19 MB]
• Collection(s):
  US Transportation Collection
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:e0c05f5e95cd5565f1c67288c0ae9522a671608fa7b51d8fea01218e368895d0