FLOW CHARACTERISTICS OF MOTORIZED THREE WHEELERS

Abstract

Traffic flow on a road consists of three components, motorized vehicles’ flow, non-motorized vehicle flow and pedestrian flow. This study concentrates on the 3-wheeler motorized vehicles flow at mid-block section on urban roads. The study was carried out on three road sections, two from New Delhi and one from Jaipur. Data were collected through a combination of manual and videographic means on the three sections, all of which are 4-lane divided arterial roads with two direction traffic. The impact of presence of three wheeler motorized vehicles on the traffic stream speed and on the road capacity was studied. From the videography, flow of vehicles (total and categorized) was recorded for every 2-min interval and this data set was further analyzed to assess the effect of three wheeler motorized vehicles on traffic flow. The analysis indicated that as the proportion of three wheelers increases in the traffic stream, the stream speed decreases and this relation is found out to be linear. Further it was also seen that the rate of reduction of stream speed depends on the speed of the traffic stream at zero- three wheeler condition. Through the analysis it was also established that with the increase in proportion of three wheeler motorized traffic, the flow of the stream (pcu/hr) was found to decrease. This reduction in flow was also found to be varying almost linearly. Through the analysis, it was also seen that the actual service volume on the 4-lane urban arterial roads exceeds the maximum service volume limit for these roads (as given in IRC 106 1990), by more than 50%.