Headway distribution for manually operated tollbooths in India in mixed traffic conditions

Abstract

This paper presents a vehicle-type-specific headway distribution analysis at toll plazas under mixed traffic conditions. The aim of the paper is to provide headway distribution models that may be used for traffic flow analysis and traffic management at tollbooths. Seven classes of vehicle and a total of 49 combinations of leader–follower vehicles were considered, out of which 11 combinations were considered for studying the headway distribution model based on the frequency of arrival of such vehicle combinations at tollbooths. The results showed that vehicle classes requiring a headway of 5–25 s followed a log-normal distribution whereas, for higher headway ranges of 15–40 s, the generalised extreme value showed the best fit. For the small car category, the Wakeby distribution showed a better result than conventional distributions. The findings of this study may be useful for developing toll plaza microscopic simulation models, which could be used for assessing and improving the performance and efficiency of tollbooths.