Management of Competing Demands On Urban Freight Corridors

Abstract

This paper compares the performance under various scenarios of an urban traffic corridor section subjected to a range of vehicle types.
A micro-simulation-based model of the corridor was developed from first principles to stochastically assign characteristics and headways for each vehicle and then to track each vehicle as it moved along the corridor. Kinematic behaviour of the different vehicle types (ranging from passenger cars through to B-doubles) were obtained from GPS data collected during a series of chase car surveys on an urban arterial freight route in suburban Brisbane. The car-following and lane-selection algorithms used by the model are outlined in the paper. In order to account for the variability between runs, multiple simulation runs were typically conducted using different random number seeds. Corridor performance was reported in terms of intersection capacity and delays as well as travel speeds and stop rates for each vehicle type.
The performance of the corridor was found to be sensitive to traffic control measures including the speed limit and traffic signal controller settings such as cycle time and progression design speed. A range of freight policy scenarios were examined, including the effects of increasing freight volumes, freight vehicle mode choice, and vehicle type-specific lane restrictions. Some policies having the potential to improve corridor traffic performance and freight efficiency were able to be identified.