Headway distribution models of two-lane roads under mixed traffic conditions: a case study from India

Introduction The time headway of vehicles is of fundamental importance in traffic engineering applications like capacity, level-of-service and safety studies. Further, the performance of traffic simulation depends on inputs into the simulation process and 'accurate vehicle generation' is critical in this context. Thus, it is important to define headway distribution pattern for the purpose of analyzing traffic and subsequently, taking infrastructure related decisions. In so far, majority of the researches on this subject are based on homogeneous traffic and effects of mixed traffic especially on two-lane roads are yet to be culminated. The present study, thus, aimed at investigating headway distributions on such roads under mixed traffic situation. Methods Field study was conducted on two-lane highways in India that exhibits heterogeneity in its traffic composition. Contestant headway distribution models were evaluated and four distribution functions namely, log-logistic, lognormal, Pearson 5 and Pearson 6 were considered while modeling the headway data. The appropriate models were selected using a methodology based on K-S test and subsequent field validation. Results Log-logistic distribution was found appropriate at moderate flow whereas, at congested state of flow it was Pearson 5. However, at unstable flow nearing capacity, both, following and non-following components of headways were observed to follow different distributional characteristics. Nomographs are developed for calculating the headway probabilities at different flow levels considering the appropriate distribution models. 'Probability of headway less than't's' increases with the flow rate and rate of such increase is considerably high for headways 7.5 s or more. This attributes to the fact that at heavy flow more vehicles are entrapped inside platoons and they move in following with shorter headways. Further, a comparison was made between the headway probabilities obtained in the current study and road segments that exhibit more or less homogeneous traffic. It was found that at moderate flow level proportion of shorter headways are considerably high under mixed traffic. Conclusions The present paper demonstrates the effect of mixed traffic on distribution of time headways of two-lane roads. Presence of slower vehicles in such traffic leads to frequent formation of platoons, thereby, increases the risk taking behavior of drivers' while overtaking. As a result, proportion of shorter headways increases resulting in highly skewed observations. Thus, the study proposed Log-logistic distribution under medium flow since it can model events which have 'increased initial rate' and Pearson 5 under heavy flow to model 'highly skewed data'. The model outputs were accordingly compared with other studies and were found to explain the mixed traffic characteristics satisfactorily. The present study, thus, creates a starting point of further initiatives aimed at establishing a robust method of modeling headways on two-lane roads with mixed traffic.