Abstract: (8776 Views)
Delay is one of the principal measures of performance used to determine the Level of Service (LOS) at signalized intersections
and several methods have been widely used to estimate vehicular delay. Very few studies only have been carried out to estimate
delay at signalized intersections under mixed traffic conditions prevailing in developing countries like India. In the present study,
various problems associated with delay estimation under mixed traffic conditions in a developing country (India) and the methods
to over come them were discussed and an attempt was made to improve the accuracy estimating the same. Five isolated signalized
intersections from a fast developing industrial city located in TamilNadu, India were chosen for the study. Site specific PCU
values were developed considering the static and dynamic characteristics of vehicles. Saturation flow was also directly measured
in the field for the prevailing roadway, traffic and signalized conditions and expressed in PCU/h. Control delay was also
measured following HCM 2000 guidelines. Later, this was compared with that estimated from the theoretical delay model. Even
after taking several measures, good correlation between observed and predicted delay could not be obtained. Therefore, in the
present scenario field measured control delay was taken into account to define LOS. A new criteria for Indian cities recently
published in the literature was used to assign LOS grades of study intersections and found to be better reflecting the field
conditions.