Tradeoffs among free-flow speed, capacity, cost, and environmental footprint in highway design

Chen Feng Ng and Kenneth Small ()

Transportation, 2012, vol. 39, issue 6, 1259-1280

Abstract: This paper investigates differentiated design standards as a source of capacity additions that are more affordable and have smaller aesthetic and environmental impacts than modern expressways. We consider several tradeoffs, including narrow versus wide lanes and shoulders on an expressway of a given total width, and high-speed expressway versus lower-speed arterial. We quantify the situations in which off-peak traffic is sufficiently great to make it worthwhile to spend more on construction, or to give up some capacity, in order to provide very high off-peak speeds even if peak speeds are limited by congestion. We also consider the implications of differing accident rates. The results support expanding the range of highway designs that are considered when adding capacity to ameliorate urban road congestion. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. 2012

Keywords: Highway design; Capacity; Free-flow speed; Parkway (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11116-012-9395-8 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Tradeoffs among Free-flow Speed, Capacity, Cost, and Environmental Footprint in Highway Design (2011)
Working Paper: Tradeoffs among Free-flow Speed, Capacity, Cost, and Environmental Footprint in Highway Design (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:transp:v:39:y:2012:i:6:p:1259-1280

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11116/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11116-012-9395-8

Access Statistics for this article

Transportation is currently edited by Kay W. Axhausen

More articles in Transportation from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().