Estimation of Equivalency Units of Vehicles on Urban Roads for Heterogenous Traffic

Abstract Nowadays, with rapidly growing economies and populations along with urbanization in the cities, there is an increasing trend in the expansion in the outskirts of the cities resulting in increasing mobilization from city to outskirts and vice versa. Eventually, the demand for road-based movements toward CBD has also increased significantly. As a result, the city’s outer rings have been facing an overburden. The vehicle composition in the city is quite different from the highways because, over the past few years, battery-run e-rickshaws have become very popular in urban transportation. The physical and dynamic characteristics of e-rickshaws are quite different from the other vehicles, however such changes in vehicle composition and dynamic characteristics of the traffic stream led to a change in traffic characteristics. The current paper aims to (a) estimate the passenger car unit (PCU) of various vehicles using different methods, (b) highlight distinctive characteristics concerning the context of PCU values in urban settings, and (c) Model selection for the estimation of the capacity of road sections based on the parametric evaluation. The Field study focused on different vehicle compositions (significantly slower vehicles, e-rickshaws), and considered urban arterials connecting to suburban arterials. Field data have been collected on mid-block sections of urban roads through the videotaping technique for the necessary analysis of PCU, macroscopic flow parameters, and level of service. The data set displayed a wide range of variations in the share of e-rickshaws and two-wheelers. Empirical investigations indicated that, as anticipated, the PCU values of e-rickshaws vary depending on various parameters, such as lane width, traffic proportions, and number of lanes. While the PCU values of all the other vehicles were in the range recommended in Indo-HCM 2017. Further, the effect of different parameters on the PCU values of the vehicle was also investigated and analysed.