Capacity drop at the bus stop on multilane divided urban roads under mixed traffic conditions

Time headway characteristics are of great importance for planning and design of roadway. The present study determines time headway distribution pattern of vehicular stream at various urban roads and evaluate drop in capacity of roadway section having curb-side bus stops. Field data for present study was collected at 8 different locations on four-lane and six-lane divided sections in the cities of Warangal and Hyderabad in India. The mean time headway of heterogeneous vehicles fitted to various headway distributions for estimating capacity of road section. The factors affecting the capacity have been identified as bus frequency, dwell time, and the average roadway width lost. Percentage reduction in capacity (PRC) is determined to develop regression model. Further, speed-flow diagrams were developed using field observed traffic flow data for determining parameters free-speed, critical speed, and roadway capacity on selected section. After comparing capacity values obtained from two methods, the study determined avg. time headway of vehicular stream under the traffic flow at capacity and free flow conditions. The study also finds capacity value of bus stop section using methodology provided in Indo-HCM (2017). The PRC values estimated based on Indo-HCM guidelines are found to be significantly higher than those estimated by the proposed PRC model. It is due to the Indo-HCM guideline considering only one parameter i.e. bus frequency. The study finds, in addition to bus frequency the dwell time, roadway width lost, and presence of an extra lane also influences the drop in capacity of bus stop section on multilane divided urban roads.