For network sections of almost all road categories, the RIN (2008) require proof of compliance with the targeted car speed, whereas themselves fail to offer methods for determining the actual car speed on a network section. Therefore, appropriate procedures for the determination of the expected car speed on highways, rural roads, as well as on inner-city main roads should be elaborated in the context of the revision of the HBS (2001). In addition to the possible review from a network planning perspective, a genuine concept for the evaluation of traffic flow on these network sections should also be developed. Therefore, it was necessary to derive an appropriate quality criterion, and to investigate its informative value as to quality levels. In order to do so, previous approaches for evaluating the quality of traffic flow on network sections based on travel speeds, travel times and/or indexes based on these parameters were analyzed and compared as to their suitability. Based on this, the definition of the concept for facilities-overlapping evaluation was established. Concept approaches were developed, investigating and assessing the suitability not only of approaches based on absolute speed, but also on travel speed and travel time indexes. Concerning the network sections of highways and rural roads, appropriate methods for the network-planning assessment were developed in form of levels of service quality (SAQ). Therefore, network-planning benchmarks were derived, which are used to assess the adequacy of an existing or planned facility, taking into account the relevant connection function level according to the RIN (2008). In order to integrate the results into the draft HBS (2012), they were configured in a standardized method. Furthermore, the respective scope of the calculation methods was defined. Additional instructions on the use of alternative methods were worked out for cases outside the respective scopes, such as microscopic traffic flow simulations. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting