The Pacific Highway is currently the major corridor between Brisbane and the Gold Coast. It undergoes periods of serious traffic congestion due to road work or capacity limitation. The Highway has only two lanes in each direction of travel. The Queensland Department of Main Roads has had plans for a toll road to run parallel to the Highway. This project has received objections on environmental grounds. An important issue is therefore the planning and implementation of measures to deal with the increasing traffic problems in the ensuing period. This paper reviews the demand-side and supply-side measures that could be considered appropriate in maintaining safe and efficient operation of this Highway in the next five years. To test the concept of travel time estimation in a traveller information system, QDOT installed a number of inductive loops on Pacific Highway on a 2 km segment in the Brisbane to Gold Coast direction just before the Helensvale Interchange. These detectors were used to provide traffic flow and speed data. A travel time prediction algorithm based on space mean speeds was developed and the field data were used to calibrate the algorithm. The study has successfully demonstrated the feasibility of estimating travel times on a freeway under incident and incident-free conditions from vehicle spot speeds. (A)
Abstract