A passing and overtaking policy has been formulated to improve the efficiency of New Zealand's two-lane state highway network. The policy will be applied to two-lane state highways running through rural and peripheral urban land-use areas, up to the point that four-laning is likely to be required. This paper reports on how the policy was derived and the results of two studies that have contributed to improving implementation of the policy. For the passing lane length and frequency study, six sets of field data were collected using pneumatic dual tube axle sensors located within the passing length and up to 2 km before and 12 km after the passing facility. The operational data acquired was used to refine the policy's long-term framework for passing and overtaking treatments. Another study examined the percentage of following vehicles at about 90 rural count stations throughout New Zealand's Waikato and Bay of Plenty areas. For each site, vehicle-by-vehicle and time interval data were used to determine percentage following by direction. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E217099.
Abstract