Development of a micro-simulation model for motorway roadworks with the use of narrow lanes and lane closure schemes

Nassrullah, ZFA

Abstract

This study presents a newly developed micro-simulation model for motorway roadwork sections to evaluate the efficiency of different temporary traffic management schemes (TTMSs) such as the use of narrow lanes, offside and inside lane closures. The effect on traffic performance (i.e. capacity and delay) of various parameters (e.g. flow rates, percentage of heavy goods vehicles, roadwork zone lengths and speed limits) has been tested. The reason for building this model from scratch is the inability of an industry standard software package (i.e. S-Paramics), which has been made available for this research, in appropriately presenting traffic behaviour at motorway roadwork sections. The newly developed micro-simulation model was built using the FORTRAN programming language. It was developed based on car-following, lane changing, gap acceptance, lane closure and narrow lanes rules.
Data from four sources (taken from different sets of data from UK motorways sites) were collected and analysed. The data was used in developing, calibrating and validating the model. Observations from motorway roadwork sites with narrow lanes scheme show certain prominent drivers’ behaviours, namely avoiding passing HGVs on adjacent lanes and lane repositioning before passing an HGV.
The simulation results revealed that, under low traffic demand, the use of narrow lanes scheme seems to perform better in terms of capacity and delay than both offside and inside lane closure schemes, whereas under high traffic demand associated with high HGVs percentage (i.e. ≥ 25%), the use of offside lane closure scheme seems to perform better in terms of capacity and delay than narrow lanes scheme and inside lane closure scheme. The simulation results showed that the presence of HGVs has a large impact on reducing site capacity. The model also suggests that a stricter speed limit compliance should be imposed on motorway roadwork sections with the use of narrow lanes TTMS in order to maintain higher section capacity and reduced delays. Regression analysis was carried out based on the simulation results in order to provide equations for use in estimating section capacity and delay.

Citation

Nassrullah, Z. Development of a micro-simulation model for motorway roadworks with the use of narrow lanes and lane closure schemes. (Thesis). University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Mar 20, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 20, 2017