This report presents the results of a study of the effect of a traffic management scheme on vehicle fuel consumption. The scheme was implemented on 3 km of a main thoroughfare in Swindon as an experiment aimed at improving the accident record of the road. Measurements were made, both before and after the scheme was implemented, using a single instrumented vehicle. Multiple regression analysis was applied to the data so as to distinguish changes in fuel consumption associated with the changed road geometry from those which were expected to arise from changes in the average speed of traffic. The test vehicle's fuel consumption showed an improvement associated with the road geometry of about 2.5 per cent, a result shown to be significant at the 1 per cent level. (Author/publisher)
Abstract