Empirical study of drivers' behaviour at weaving sections

Al-Jameel, HAE

Abstract

Motorway capacity is constrained by turbulent sections such as merging, diverging and weaving areas. A motorway weaving section is a segment of the road in which an on-ramp is followed by an off-ramp with limited spacing between them. Various equations have been adopted to determine the capacity of such weaving sections. Some of these include factors such as weaving ratio (R), volume ratio (VR) and weaving configuration which influence the weaving capacity. In this paper, drivers’ behaviours at weaving sections were studied in order to assess the effect on capacity of such sections and to aid in the development of a micro-simulation model to evaluate the performance of these sections for various configurations. Factors such as VR, R, the upstream traffic characteristics, the frequency of lane changes (FLC), the percentage of the pre-segregation for the upstream traffic of weaving section and the length of weaving section were investigated. Therefore, seven sites of weaving sections with different configurations and lengths have been selected. The results of the analysed data indicated that the FLC differs according to the configuration of the weaving section. For example, in the case of ramp weaving sections (i.e. lane gain/lane drop), the results indicated that the maximum FLC in every 76 metres (i.e. equivalent to 250 feet) within the weaving section is up to 1500 per hour. This value was found to be much higher than those reported in other studies. In addition, the effective length that is used by those weaving vehicles is also influenced by the type of weaving configuration. For short weaving sections (i.e. 150 metres or less) the effective length is basically the whole length, whereas, for relatively longer weaving sections (i.e. 300 metres or more), the effective length is found to be equal to 200 metres or less.

Citation

Al-Jameel, H. Empirical study of drivers' behaviour at weaving sections

• Other Type: Other
• Deposit Date: Apr 26, 2011
• Keywords: weaving capacity, weaving length, weaving ratio
• Related Public URLs: http://www.utsg.net/publication.php?Year=2011&abstract=hamidathab2011#hamidathab2011; http://www.utsg.net