Intelligent Lane Utilisation to Improve Freight Transportation Mobility on Arterials

The increase in commodity flow and just-in-time pickup/delivery activities in urban areas have increased truck traffic on urban roadways, which raises safety and operational concerns. The governing agencies are planning to improve the efficiency by adopting the Intelligent Lane Utilisation (ILU) tactics along the highways and major arterials. Truck only lane and truck lane restriction tactics were selected to carry out the analysis for this study.

The objective of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of selected ILU tactic on arterial roadways with significant truck traffic. The study used two approaches, Approach I (fixed traffic demand) carried out microsimulation analysis. Whereas Approach II (changed traffic demand) carried macrosimulation analysis and result of the analysis was used as an input for the microsimulation analysis. The findings indicate that success of ILU tactic depends on various factors such as the number of lanes and the link length between major intersections, etc.