Citation

Huber MJ. Transp. Res. Rec. 1982; 869: 60-70.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1982, Transportation Research Board, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences USA, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The passenger-car equivalent (PCE) of a truck represents the number of passenger cars (basic vehicles) displaced by each truck in the traffic stream under specific conditions of flow. A model is proposed for estimating PCE-values for vehicles under free-flowing, multilane conditions. Some measure of impedance as a function of traffic flow is used to relate two traffic streams--one that has trucks mixed with passenger cars and the other that has passenger cars only. PCE-values are related to the ratio between the volumes of the two streams at some common level of impedance. A deterministic model of traffic flow (Greenshields') is used to estimate the impedance-flow relationship. Three measures of impedance are considered, each of which will generate a separate PCE-value for a truck of given characteristics. PCE-values are also shown to relate to speed and length of subject vehicles and to vary with the proportion of trucks in the traffic stream.

Language: en

Keywords

MATHEMATICAL MODELS; MOTOR TRANSPORTATION; TRAFFIC SURVEYS