Lane usage, following behavior, and time-gap models for a multi-lane freeway in India

Abstract

There is very less research literature available on urban freeways or expressways in India. Hence, this study focuses on understanding the nature of traffic flow on a very busy eight-lane divided urban freeway namely the Delhi–Gurgaon expressway. To this end, we first present the statistics such as vehicle–class mix and lane utilization on the selected section of expressway and move on to fit time-gap models for the flow values of 7189 and 9114 vehicles h⁻¹ (vph) in one direction of traffic flow on the expressway. A k-sample A–D test was conducted to assess the goodness of fit of the time-gap models. It was found from the study that the combination of Weibull and Extreme Value mixture distribution gives the best fit for modeling time gaps at observed flow levels of 7189 and 9114 vph with 5 and 1% level of significance, respectively.

Keywords:

• Indian freeways
• Expressways
• Mixed traffic
• Vehicle–class mix
• Lane -utilization
• Time gaps
• Goodness-of-fit tests

Acknowledgement

The authors thank Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India, for providing the research grant for conducting this study.