CHARACTERIZATION OF FREEWAY CAPACITY REDUCTION RESULTING FROM TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS

Incidents, defined as unplanned events that temporarily reduce roadway capacity, contribute significantly to urban freeway congestion. Transportation agencies have developed incident management programs (IMPs) to support effective identification of and response to incidents. An important element of an effective IMP is the ability to accurately estimate the freeway capacity remaining following an incident. The aim of this research was to characterize urban freeway capacity reduction resulting from traffic accidents using a large set of traffic flow and accident data. Traffic accidents, a subcategory of incidents, were investigated since they, in particular, result in significant urban freeway congestion due to their frequency and generally substantial reduction of capacity. The results of this effort lead to the following conclusions: 1) accidents significantly reduce remaining capacity on freeway segments, well beyond the physical blockage of lanes, and 2) there is evidence to suggest that accident capacity reduction is best modeled as a random variable, not a deterministic value. The results of this research show that the beta distribution provides a good representation of accident capacity reduction for 1 or 2 lanes of 3 lanes blocked.

• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/oclc/8674831
• Corporate Authors:

  American Society of Civil Engineers

  1801 Alexander Bell Drive
  Reston, VA  United States  20191-4400
• Authors:
  • Smith, B L
  • Qin, Lingqiao
  • Venkatanarayana, R
• Publication Date: 2003-7

Language

• English

Media Info

• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: p. 362-368
• Serial:
  • Journal of Transportation Engineering
  • Volume: 129
  • Issue Number: 4
  • Publisher: American Society of Civil Engineers
  • ISSN: 0733-947X
  • Serial URL: https://ascelibrary.org/journal/jtepbs

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Crash causes; Crash data; Crash risk forecasting; Freeways; Highway capacity; Highway safety; Interstate highways; Traffic crashes; Traffic flow; Traffic relationships; Traffic safety
• Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors; I82: Accidents and Transport Infrastructure;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00960549
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS, ATRI
• Created Date: Jul 7 2003 12:00AM