Traffic Characteristics of Mixed Traffic Flow in Urban Arterials

Motorcycles are one of the main transportation modes in some Asian countries because of their advantages, such as better mobility and lower costs, as compared to automobiles. Most of the current designs of roads, such as speed limit and lane markings, are based on automobile traffic and not entirely suitable for motorcycles. Therefore, there is a need to further investigate the traffic characteristics of mixed traffic flow and the interactions of vehicles where the proportion of motorcycles is high. With a proposed novel data collection approach using aerial videography, detailed and accurate vehicle trajectory dataset for traffic stream in urban arterials are collected. The mixed traffic characteristics such as lane choice, distribution of lateral positions, spacing distributions at various level of traffic density are investigated. The characteristics could be useful for the development of microscopic behavioral models and integration with traffic simulation models for the evaluation of mixed traffic environment.