Nassiri H., Khayat Khoie A.,
Volume 3, Issue 3 (9-2005)
Abstract
This paper studies the effects of queue formation in the bottlenecks at off-ramps on the capacity of the freeways. Six expressway exit-ramps throughout the city of Tehran, Iran were selected and their traffic flows were observed in thirty-minute intervals during which the queue formation and queue elimination occurred. Assuming that in the absence of the queue, the traffic flow is in its normal state, the changes in the volume of through vehicles has been modeled as an average estimator of the change in the expressway capacity.The developed models prove that the changes in freeway capacity are due to queue formation at the off-ramp sections. However, the estimated figures are different from those obtained from the theory of freeway capacity. The conclusion is that lane blockage is only one of many factors that affect the freeway capacity while the queue forms. Since it is not possible to quantify all those factors individually, the resulting models are macroscopic estimates of the phenomenon.