Experimental research of traffic delays at the adjacent territory exit

Abstract

The presented scientific work is devoted to the study of problem to determine traffic delays at the adjacent territory exit on city highways. Currently there are already a large number of different approaches to determine delays at unsignalized intersections have been developed, but they don’t fully take into account the aspects of traffic organization and drivers’ behavior at the adjacent territory exit.

The results of field observations of traffic at the adjacent territory exit are the basis for the delays evaluation, which are determined by the proposed approach. The developed approach to determine traffic delays is based on the queuing theory and taken into account the priority of traffic in competing directions. It was established that the deviation of factual transport delays and delays obtained by the proposed approach for maneuvers of turns to the right (merging) and left (crossing) does not exceed 10 %, which indicates the possibility of its use at such objects as the adjacent territory exit. Based on the empirical data obtained it was determined the factual delays distribution of vehicles at the adjacent territory exit which for all considered cases corresponds to the lognormal law with a fairly high probability.

To reduce the deviations of model and factual transport delays at the adjacent territory exit it is necessary to take into account the stochastic characteristics of parameters the process of making maneuvers of turns to the right and left in the model. Such a parameter is critical interval between vehicles in the main direction (road), at which any vehicle waiting for a maneuver at the adjacent territory exit, will be able to turn right (merging) or left (crossing), which can be determined by statistical processing of the results of field observations.

Key words: traffic flow, delay, critical gap, adjacent territory exit, field observations