Transportation Engineering Case Study

City Council voted 7-1 to banish trucks from Hampton Boulevard and other city streets during certain times of the day. The move is an effort to bring relief to neighborhoods besieged by persistent traffic jams on the road, which narrows to four confined lanes as it approaches the Midtown Tunnel. Yet many residents said the city did not go far enough. “Most of the container truck traffic is heading to or from Norfolk International Terminals. Virginia Port Authority leaders say a ban would increase costs for goods because truckers would be forced to go miles out of their way. And a truck ban may not impact overall traffic that much.” (Wavy news 10). Our group conducted an analysis based on data given to us from a recent study, which agrees that the ban on trucks really doesn’t impact Level of Service on Hampton Boulevard. We chose to look at the stretch of Hampton Boulevard from 43rd Street to 49th Street. We used the highway capacity manual software to analyze these intersections. As you can see from the chart, The Level of Service on Hampton Boulevard is not affected by the truck restrictions. We used the data provided and ran the software once each in the AM and PM using 6% trucks (no truck restrictions), 1% trucks (restrictions) and once with a 5% volume increase. The volume increase was used in conjunction with 1% trucks, to simulate that the restricted trucks had been replaced with cars. We found that the Truck restriction made no difference to level of service. It is important to note that the determination of level of service is based on the approach delay. Figure 1 shows that Hampton Boulevard has an acceptable level of service.

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Figure 1.

The minor cross- roads, i.e. 43rd street, are where the breakdown is. All of the minor roads have level of service C or worse. Figure 2. shows an example report from the HCM software out put. [pic] Figure 2 Looking at the v/c ratio would lead me to believe that