THE 1985 HIGHWAY CAPACITY MANUAL AND ROAD USER COSTS FOR 2-LANE ROADS

This article is to investigate the effect of speed-volume curves and the percent time delay (PTD) parameter on user costs computed for two-lane roads. Another objective is to provide a brief description of a proposed model for cost of comfort and convenience that may be helpful to traffic engineers when they use the 1985 highway capacity manual (HCM's) speed-volume curves for estimating user costs for two-lane roads. The cost figures presented in this analysis were obtained by using traffic and cost statistics from Alberta Transportation, the highway agency for the province of Alberta, Canada. For the purpose of a comparative cost analysis, the speed-volume curves and capacity calculations, which are a prerequisite to the determination of user costs, are based on both the 1985 and the 1965 HCMs.