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Article

ESTIMATION OF SHOULDER LANE UTILIZATION ON EXPRESSWAY MIDBLOCK SECTION

DOI: 10.7708/ijtte.2018.8(4).08


8 / 4 / 494 - 512 Pages

Author(s)

Pornnarong Lueanpech - Department of Civil Engineering, King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok, Bangkok, Thailand -

Terdsak Rongviriyapanich - Department of Civil Engineering, King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok, Bangkok, Thailand -


Abstract

During the peak hour, drivers are occasionally allowed to use the shoulder lane on the Kanjanapisek Expressway to provide additional space and reduce travel delay. Based on the observation, we found a significant number of vehicles regularly used the shoulder lane both during the peak and off-peak period. Concentrate on midblock section, we found the use of shoulder lane during the free flow traffic condition. The consequence of inconsistent lane utilization on midblock section affects the stability of traffic flow and creates a bottleneck on the expressway. This study aimed to investigate the characteristic of shoulder lane utilization behavior, identified significant parameters affecting shoulder lane utilization behavior and compared the empirical data with simple linear regression and sigmoid function. In this study, the empirical data of 5 expressway midblock sections on the Kanjanapisek Expressway was chosen for study area. Traffic stream data collections were gathered from image processing traffic detection system. The result indicated that the shoulder lane utilization behavior has unique characteristic in different flow condition. The most influenced factors that contributes to shoulder lane utilization was the total density. Linear and sigmoid function were compared to establish relationship between the influenced factor and the shoulder lane utilization. In term of modelling, the sigmoid function provided good estimates of shoulder lane utilization on expressway midblock section of the Kanjanapisek Expressway. These results should contribute to a better understanding of discretionary lane selection behavior.


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Acknowledgements:

The Ph.D. scholarship was funded by the Expressway Authority of Thailand and this research was partially supported by Graduate College of King Monkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok. The authors would like to thank the Department of Expressway System Engineering Research and Development, Expressway Authority of Thailand for providing the access to the EXAT ITS database system.


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