Saturation of road infrastructure has considerable impact on vehicle operating speeds and traffic volumes. Projects can be designed to increase the capacity of the road or network so that operating speeds are maintained. Information is often limited regarding future traffic behaviour in the base case; this is especially true if the road is expected to reach capacity before the end of the applied evaluation period. If a road is projected to reach capacity in the base case and not the project case there will be a disparity in traffic volumes between the cases. This disparity can present a number of problems for the analyst.
This paper focuses on the evaluation of town bypass projects. Town bypasses increase the capacity of the network by allowing through traffic to avoid urban areas. These urban areas often have insufficient capacity to cater for projected traffic volumes. In the context of town bypasses, this paper aims to identify the problems in determining benefits when such capacity issues arise and identify the approaches that can be applied to remedy these problems.
An applied case study is used to illustrate the practical effects of applying differing theoretical approaches. Alternate scenarios illustrate evaluation results using various suggested theoretical approaches. The rationale behind the application of these alternate approaches is explored and discussed with the goal of matching theory with enhanced analytical rigour and accuracy. Ultimately, this paper discusses economically rigorous approaches and reports results from the application of different approaches in dealing with excessive traffic volumes.
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The reference and link to the original conference paper, available at:
Best, M. and Davies, W. (2013), Dealing with Projected Capacity Constraints in Road Project Evaluation, Australasian Transport Research Forum 2013 (Paper and presentation), available at: http://www.atrf.info/papers/2013/2013_best_davies.pdf
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