Modeling and Analyzing Road Capacity in Subway Work Zones Using Traffic Flow Organization Theories

To reduce negative impacts of subway construction on road traffic, this paper evaluated the influence of traffic flow organization on road capacity based on various traffic flow characteristics of work zones, including the reduced speed limit, no entry for large vehicles (including bus rerouting), slow traffic signs, and so on. To better model the road capacity in work zones, a new concept called influence level is defined and introduced in this paper. The parameters of various models, including the initial parameter value selection, are studied and discussed in this work. A case study is conducted to evaluate the rationality and feasibility of the proposed traffic flow organization plan using the data collected from a section of Wuhan Subway Line 4. The results show that influence level is a good approach to study the road capacity in work zones and that the proposed model can accurately model the road traffic capacity.