A Model and Its Applications for Predicting Passing Rate at Passing Zones on Two-Lane Rural Highways
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 142, Issue 3
Abstract
Passing zones are designed to provide sufficient sight distance for fast vehicles to pass safely slow vehicles and contribute to operational efficiency of two-lane highways. However, lack of suitable models to predict passing rate and capacity has made it difficult to quantify operational benefits of passing zones. In this paper, a model is proposed to predict passing rate in the subject direction at passing zones using traffic and geometric factors. The model is developed based on speed and passing data collected at 19 passing zones in Uganda using pneumatic tube classifiers and video recordings. Findings show that passing rates depend on the length of the passing zone, absolute vertical grade, traffic volume in two travel directions, directional split, 85th percentile speed of free-flow vehicles and percent heavy vehicles in the subject direction. The peak passing rate also referred to as the passing capacity occurs at 200, 220, and 240 vehicles/h in the subject direction for , , and directional splits, respectively. The model could potentially be applicable in planning, design, and safety evaluation of two-lane rural highways.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
This research was funded by Swedish International Development Agency through SIDA/SAREC research grant to Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.
References
Aarts, L., and Schagen, I. V. (2006). “Driving speed and the risk of road crashes: A review.” Accid. Anal. Prev., 38(2), 215–224.
AASHTO. (2001). A policy on geometric design of highways and streets, 4th Ed., Washington, DC.
AASHTO. (2011). “Elements of design.” A policy on geometric design of highways and streets, 6th Ed., Vol. 183, Washington, DC.
Abdel-Aty, M. A., and Radwan, A. E. (2000). “Modeling traffic accident occurrence and involvement.” Accid. Anal. Prev., 32(5), 633–642.
Akaike, H. (1973). “Information theory and an extension of the maximum likelihood principle.” 2nd Int. Symp. on Inference Theory, Akademia Kaido, Budapest, Hungary, 267–281.
Al-Kaisy, A., and Karjala, S. (2008). “Indicators of performance on two-lane rural highways: Empirical investigation.” Transp. Res. Rec., 2071, 87–97.
Al-Kaisy, A., and Karjala, S. (2010). “Car-following interaction and the definition of free-moving vehicles on two-lane rural highways.” J. Transp. Eng., 925–931.
Bar-Gera, H., and Shinar, D. (2005). “The tendency of drivers to pass other vehicles.” Transp. Res. Part F Traffic Psychol. Behav., 8(6), 429–439.
Carlson, P., Miles, J., and Johnson, P. (2006). “Daytime high-speed passing maneuvers observed on rural two-lane, two-way highway: Findings and implications.” Transp. Res. Rec., 1961, 9–15.
Cohen, M. A., and Polus, A. (2011). “Estimating percent-time-spent-following on two-lane rural highways.” Transp. Res. Part C Emerging Technol., 19(6), 1319–1325.
Daganzo, C. (1975). “Probabilistic structure of two-lane road traffic.” Transp. Res., 9(6), 339–346.
Diamond Traffic Products. (2006). Apollo counter/classifier: Field unit instruction manual, Oakridge, OR.
Farah, H., Bekhor, S., Polus, A., and Toledo, T. (2009). “A passing gap acceptance model for two-lane rural highways.” Transportmetrica, 5(3), 159–172.
Farah, H., and Toledo, T. (2010). “Passing behavior on two-lane highways.” Transp. Res. Part F Traffic Psychol. Behav., 13(6), 355–364.
Fridstrøm, L., Ifver, J., Ingebrigtsen, S., Kulmala, R., and Thomsen, L. K. (1995). “Measuring the contribution of randomness, exposure, weather, and daylight to the variation in road accident counts.” Accid. Anal. Prev., 27(1), 1–20.
Greene, W. (2008). “Functional forms for the negative binomial model for count data.” Econ. Lett., 99(3), 585–590.
Harwood, D. W., Gilmore, K. D., Richard, R. K., Dunn, M. J., and Sun, C. (2008). “Passing sight distance criteria.”, National Cooperative Highway Research Program, Washington, DC.
Harwood, D. W., and John, A. S. (1986). “Operational effectiveness of passing lanes on two-lane highways.”, Federal Highway Administration, Washington, DC.
Hegeman, G. (2008). Assisted overtaking: An assessment of overtaking on two-lane rural roads, Doctoral dissertation, TRAIL Research School, Delft Univ. of Technology, Delft, Netherlands.
Ismail, N., and Jemain, A. A. (2007). Handling overdispersion with negative binomial and generalized Poisson regression models, Casualty Actuarial Society, Arlington, VA.
Ivan, J. N., Pasupathy, R. K., and Ossenbruggen, P. J. (1999). “Differences in causality factors for single and multi-vehicle crashes on two-lane roads.” Accid. Anal. Prev., 31(6), 695–704.
King, G. (1989). “Variance specification in event count models: From restrictive assumptions to a generalized estimator*.” Am. J. Political Sci., 33(3), 762–784.
Kutner, M. H., Nachtsheim, C. J., and Neter, J. (2004). Applied linear regression models, 4th Ed., McGraw-Hill, New York.
Llorca, C., and García, A. (2011). “Evaluation of passing process on two-lane rural highways in Spain with new methodology based on video data.” Transp. Res. Rec., 2262, 42–52.
Lord, D., Washington, S. P., and Ivan, J. N. (2005). “Poisson, Poisson-gamma and zero-inflated regression models of motor vehicle crashes: Balancing statistical fit and theory.” Accid. Anal. Prev., 37(1), 35–46.
Luttinen, R. T. (2001). “Percent time-spent-following as performance measure for two-lane highways.” Transp. Res. Rec., 1776, 52–59.
Mayora, J. M. P. (2003). “Relevant variables for crash rate prediction in Spain’s two lane rural roads.” Transportation Research Board’s 82nd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC.
Milton, E. K., and Arnold, P. (1990). Introduction to probability and statistics: Principles and applications for engineering and the computing sciences, 2nd Ed., McGraw-Hill, Singapore.
Moreno, A., Carlos, L., García, A., and Pérez-Zuriaga, A.-M. (2013). “Operational effectiveness of passing zones depending on length and traffic volume.” Transp. Res. Rec., 2395, 57–65.
Morrall, J. F., and Werner, A. (1990). “Measuring level of service of two-lane highways by overtakings.” Transp. Res. Rec., 1287, 62–69.
MOWT (Ministry of Works and Transport). (2010). “Geometric design manual.” Road design manual, Vol. 1, Entebbe, Uganda, 70.
Polus, A., and Cohen, M. A. (2009). “Theoretical and empirical relationships for the quality of flow and for a new level of service on two-lane highways.” J. Transp. Eng., 135(6), 380–385.
Polus, A., Livneh, M., and Frischer, B. (2000). “Evaluation of the passing process on two-lane rural highways.” Transp. Res. Rec., 1701, 53–60.
Potts, I. B., and Harwood, D. W. (2004). “Benefits and design/location criteria for passing lanes.” Midwest Research Institute, Kansas City, MO.
R Core Team. (2014). “R: A language and environment for statistical computing.” R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria.
Sawalha, Z., and Sayed, T. (2006). “Transferability of accident prediction models.” Saf. Sci., 44(3), 209–219.
Shariat-Mohaymany, A., Tavakoli-Kashani, A., Nosrati, H., and Ranjbari, A. (2011). “Identifying significant predictors of head-on conflicts on two-lane rural roads using inductive loop detectors data.” Traffic Inj. Prev., 12(6), 636–641.
TRB (Transportation Research Board). (2010). “Two-lane highways.” Chapter 15, Highway capacity manual, Vol. 76, Washington, DC.
Van As, S. C., and Van Niekerk, A. (2004). “The operational analysis of two-lane rural highways.” 23rd Annual Southern African Transport Conf., Document Transformation Technologies, Pretoria, South Africa, 12–15.
Venables, W. N., and Ripley, B. D. (2002). Modern applied statistics with S, 4th Ed., Springer, New York.
Wardrop, J. G. (1952). “Some theoretical aspects of road traffic research.” Proc., Institution of Civil Engineers, Vol. 36, 325–362.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Copyright
© 2015 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Dec 31, 2014
Accepted: Sep 30, 2015
Published online: Dec 30, 2015
Published in print: Mar 1, 2016
Discussion open until: May 30, 2016
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.