IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ortrsc/v12y1978i3p250-263.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Effect of Small Cars on the Capacity of Signalized Urban Intersections

Author

Listed:
  • Gerald N. Steuart

    (University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada)

  • Bu-Yong Shin

    (McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada)

Abstract

Time headways between vehicles being discharged from a queue at a signalized urban intersection is a measure of the intersection’s capacity. An event recorder actuated by tape switches on the road surface is used to measure headways at various signalized intersections in Toronto. The headways during saturation flow are related to the size of the vehicles and it is found that vehicles follow a small car with a closer headway than a full-sized car and a small car follows a vehicle closer than a full-sized car. The combined effect when both the lead and following vehicles are small cars is found to yield the smallest headways. This combined effect is most significant for the vehicles at the beginning of the queue. As a result, it is estimated that the capacity of a signalized intersection is increased by up to 15% for a stream of small cars over a stream of full-sized cars.

Suggested Citation

  • Gerald N. Steuart & Bu-Yong Shin, 1978. "The Effect of Small Cars on the Capacity of Signalized Urban Intersections," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 12(3), pages 250-263, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ortrsc:v:12:y:1978:i:3:p:250-263
    DOI: 10.1287/trsc.12.3.250
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/trsc.12.3.250
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/trsc.12.3.250?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Saha, Arpita & Chakraborty, Souvik & Chandra, Satish & Ghosh, Indrajit, 2018. "Kriging based saturation flow models for traffic conditions in Indian cities," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 38-51.
    2. Pitstick, Mark E. & Garrison, William L., 1991. "Restructuring The Automobile/highway System For Lean Vehicles: The Scaled Precedence Activity Network (SPAN) Approach," Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings qt8qr921tc, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:ortrsc:v:12:y:1978:i:3:p:250-263. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.