Level of Service Classification for Urban Heterogeneous Traffic: A Case Study of Kanapur Metropolis

The Highway Capacity Manual (HCM, 1985) has defined level of service mostly for the developed countries having predominant contribution of motorized vehicles. There are very fewer number of models to simulate the urban heterogeneous traffic flow having significant proportion of non-motorized vehicles. These types of flows are mostly observed in the countries of Asia-Pacific region. The flow of heterogeneous traffic on urban roads is highly complex and the existing analytical models cannot be used to predict the flow behavior on urban corridors. A traffic simulation model, which can replicate the movement of heterogeneous traffic, has been developed to analyze the various environment of the road system. Traffic studies have been conducted on different roads of Kanpur metropolis. It includes parameter estimation of different sub-models of the simulation system and traffic and driver behavior modeling. After development of traffic simulation model, model has been successfully calibrated and validated for the urban heterogeneous traffic flow conditions on the Kanpur roads. The simulation model has been further applied for experiments under different road, traffic, and operating conditions. For level of service experiments a two-lane (7 m) wide-level tangent road section (Road – I) is selected for simulation runs. As based on the observed traffic composition in Kanpur a benchmark traffic composition (Level I) is selected for simulation runs. This benchmark composition has 35 percent of motorized vehicles and 65 percent of nonmotorized vehicles. Road stretch of 500 meter length with additional warming up zone of 300 meter length is adopted in this study for simulation experiments. Simulation runs are planned at increasing flow levels (8–10 flow levels) until flow approaches unstable state. It is planned to simulate 1600 vehicles for each run. To eliminate the effect of transient state, the statistics of the first one hundred vehicles are ignored. In the present study, level of service (LOS) is defined as composite of several operating characteristics that are supposed to measure the quality of service as perceived by the user at different flow levels. During analysis operating characteristics considered to define LOS are journey speed of cars, journey speed of motorized two wheelers, concentration, and road occupancy. Based on the simulation results of benchmark road (Road – I) and traffic composition (Level I) level of service is classified into LOS I, LOS II, LOS III, and LOS IV. Level of service criteria developed in this study may also help to identify the deficiencies of an urban road system and to plan for alternative improvements to attain a desired level of service. 272 Transportation Research Circular E-C018: 4th International Symposium on Highway Capacity