Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Reexamination of directional distribution of highway traffic

Journal Article · · Journal of Transportation Engineering; (United States)
;  [1]
  1. Univ. of Regina, Regina, Saskatchewan S4S 0A2 (CA)

The investigation presented in this paper considers the temporal and spatial characteristics of directional distribution of traffic on rural highways. A total of 60 highway locations, representing a wide range of traffic-stream characteristics, were investigated. The results of this study clearly indicate that directional distribution varies from hour to hour to hour during the day, day to day and month to month during the daily peak volume hours, and from one road type to another. In general, directional distribution does not remain stable even during the highest-volume hours of the year. A sensitivity analysis was carried out to study the effect of changes in the value of design directional split on the number of highway congestion hours in a year. It was also found that, in some cases, the current practice of taking the value of directional split during the design hour as the design directional split can result in very large errors of estimates. A method was developed in this study to determine the design directional split for use in highway traffic analysis.

OSTI ID:
5032826
Journal Information:
Journal of Transportation Engineering; (United States), Journal Name: Journal of Transportation Engineering; (United States) Vol. 118:2; ISSN JTPED; ISSN 0867-4831
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

Similar Records

Variability in traffic monitoring data. Final summary report
Technical Report · Fri Aug 01 00:00:00 EDT 1997 · OSTI ID:629487

Variability in continuous traffic monitoring data
Technical Report · Mon Jul 01 00:00:00 EDT 1996 · OSTI ID:403972

Design hourly volume from road users' perspective
Journal Article · Tue Jul 01 00:00:00 EDT 1986 · J. Transp. Eng.; (United States) · OSTI ID:7242075