01336920

Component

This paper presents an empirical study of freeway weave bottleneck to understand the weave’s capacity-change mechanism in detail and proposes a basic structure for weaving capacity modelling. To these ends, a weave bottleneck in central Bangkok was selected and videotaped for two morning’s rush hours. The data were then manually extracted and analyzed by using oblique-coordinate based plots to reveal unprecedented traffic characteristics at the weaving section. These data verify that the capacity of this weaving bottleneck is not fixed and fluctuates over time depending on the on-ramp and off-ramp flows. It was found that on-ramp surges induce lane changes from slow to fast lanes, and cause an increase in the overall freeway capacity. On the other hand, any off-ramp surges influence lane changes from fast to slow lanes, bringing the overall freeway capacity down. Furthermore, a basic structure for modelling the capacity at a weaving bottleneck is proposed according to the mechanism found herein.

01329018

11-0747

English

10p

2011

Transportation Research Board 90th Annual Meeting

DVD

Figures; Photos; References; Tables (2)

Bottlenecks; Freeway operations; Highway capacity; Lane changing; Merging traffic; Off ramps; On ramps; Parts of roads; Traffic data; Traffic flow; Weaving sections

Bangkok (Thailand)

Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2011 Paper #11-0747

TRIS, TRB

Feb 17 2011 5:33PM