Most traffic departments all over the world install speed humps on local two-lane residential streets with low traffic volumes and posted speeds of less than 48.3 km/h (30 mile/h). The lack of clear and uniform design standards and guidelines for the installation of speed humps in Jordan led to their existence on highways with heavy traffic volumes, which caused considerable traffic delay at these locations. The aim of this paper was to develop models to estimate the effect of speed humps on traffic delay, based on field data collected from 15 speed humps in Jordan. The locations selected were in urban and suburban areas where the terrain is level and there are no unusual sight distance or traffic characteristics. All humps are made of asphaltic material and have parabolic shapes with variable heights and widths. The MID /1 queuing delay model was used to establish a relationship that estimates the hump delay as a function of the arrival rate and hump saturation headway. An empirical model was developed to estimate the hump saturation headway as a function of the hump height and width, and the average speed of vehicles upstream of the hump. (a).
Abstract