Calibrating the passenger car equivalent on Italian two line highways: a case study

AbstractThe Level of Service (LOS) of a road infrastructure, a concept introduced for the first time in the Highway Capacity Manual (second edition), is defined as the ‘qualitative measure of traffic conditions and their perception by users’. The Highway Capacity Manual, developed in the U.S., is still the most highly internationally credited reference text in the study of vehicular traffic. The method proposed by the Highway Capacity Manual is based mainly on studies and research compiled in the U.S., so in order to apply this method to other realities (e.g. Italy), research needs to be carried out at a local level. In this study, a series of studies were carried out to verify the transferability of these procedures to two roads classified as ‘two-lane highways’. Two fixed RTMS (Remote Traffic Microwave Sensor) were used to record traffic data for two sections located at 3100 km on the SP30 and at 8900 km on the SP175 from 1 January to 31 December 2010. From the data, it was possible to determine not onl...

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