New NCHRP 15-57 Project, Led by UF, Will Develop New Highway Capacity Manual (HCM) Methods to Address Systems Analysis

This project, led by Dr. Lily Elefteriadou of the UFTI, and with participation from Cambridge Systematics, and Dr. Alex Skabardonis of UC Berkeley, will develop new methods for considering spillback from freeways onto urban streets and also from urban streets onto freeways.

The project begun in August 2016 and is expected to be completed by January 2019.  The researchers will first be exploring the feasibility of using various performance measures (such as travel time) that can be used to evaluate operational performance across different types of facilities.  Next, the project will collect field data across the US, and will also rely on simulation to develop these new procedures.

The project team will work closely with the Highway Capacity and Quality of Service (HCQS) committee of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) to ensure these procedures, when completed, will be suitable for inclusion in upcoming editions of the HCM.  The research team has extensive experience in the development of HCM procedures and is planning to make a short presentation summarizing the project work at the upcoming Annual TRB meeting in Washington D.C. during the HCQS committee meeting.

“This project will focus on systems analysis, which is crucial for considering congested conditions and spillback within the HCM,” Elefteriadou said. “Current procedures cannot evaluate conditions such as the one shown in the figure when there is a long queue blocking traffic, which results from downstream congestion.”

For more information, contact:
Dr. Lily Elefteriadou
Professor & UFTI Director
elefter@ce.ufl.edu