Increasing Bottleneck Capacity through Provision of Bottleneck Location Information

This paper describes how more than 50% of traffic congestion occurs in uninterrupted flow sections of sag or upgrade slope and tunnel entrances on intercity expressways in Japan. Based on the result of several experiments that provide bottleneck location information with simple variable message signs, this paper evaluates the effect of the variable message signs on the increase of bottleneck capacity. As a result, observed queue discharge rate is increased by 5-15%, which could recover 25% to nearly 90% of capacity drop from pre-queue breakdown flow to queue discharge flow depending upon the bottleneck. A mechanism is described in the paper from the viewpoint of drivers’ behavior. The increase of pre-queue breakdown flow rate could also be expected.

• Corporate Authors:

  World Conference on Transport Research Society

  Secretariat, 14 Avenue Berthelot
  69363 Lyon cedex 07,   France 
• Authors:
  • Xing, Jian
  • Takahashi, Hideki
  • Takeuchi, Toshio
• Conference:
  • 11th World Conference on Transport Research
  • Location: Berkeley CA, United States
  • Date: 2007-6-24 to 2007-6-28
• Publication Date: 2007

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: CD-ROM
• Features: Figures; Photos; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 23p
• Monograph Title: 11th World Conference on Transport Research

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Bottlenecks; Highway capacity; Traffic congestion; Traffic flow; Traffic flow rate; Traffic queuing; Travel behavior; Tunnels; Variable message signs
• Geographic Terms: Japan
• Subject Areas: Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01117507
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Dec 30 2008 12:32PM