Increasing demand for road freight has lead to a widespread adoption of more-productive large freight vehicles (LFVs), such as B-Doubles, by Australia's road freight industry. Individual LFVs have a greater potential to impact traffic efficiency through their greater length and poorer longitudinal performance. However, this is offset to an extent as fewer vehicles are required to perform a given freight task on a tonne-km basis. This research has developed a means of characterising the effects that large freight vehicles have on the performance of an urban arterial corridor managed by signalised intersections. A corridor-level microsimulation model was developed from first principles, which modelled the longitudinal performance of individual vehicles to a greater accuracy than most existing traffic simulation software does. The model was calibrated from traffic counts and GPS-equipped chase car surveys conducted on an urban arterial corridor in Brisbane's southern suburbs. The model was applied to various freight policy and traffic management scenarios, including freight vehicle mode choice, lane utilisation and traffic signal settings; as well as the effectiveness of green time extension for approaching heavy vehicles. Benefits were able to be quantified in terms of reduced travel times and stop rates for both heavy and light vehicles in urban arterial corridors.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/265416 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Ramsay, Euan Douglas |
| Publisher | Queensland University of Technology |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Copyright Euan Douglas Ramsay |
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