I
research and development. predicts higher X. = the degree of saturation below
Compared with the other delay for- which the second term of the de-
mulas, the HCM formula predicts higher delays for lay formula is zero. This can be
delays for oversaturated conditions, and oversaturted expressed as
the differences between the prediction x = a + bsg (2)
from the HCM formula and the other conditions. where:
formulas increase with increasing degree
of saturation. An alternative to the The generalized formula could be cal- Sg = capacity per cycle (s = satura-
HCM delay formula, which matches the ibrated to develop a more suitable for- tion flow rate in vehicles per sec-
other formulas for oversaturated condi- mula for U.S. conditions. It might also ond and g = effective green
tions, is given. The alternative formula, be possible to calibrate it for vehicle-ac- time in seconds), and
derived from the generalized formula, tuated and fixed-time signals separately. a,b = calibration parameters.
predicts delays that are very close to Various other issues related to this dis- The two terms of the delay formula
those predicted by the original HCM cussion and briefly mentioned in this ar- can be referred to as the uniform delay
formula for undersaturated conditions, ticle will be discussed elsewhere. (du) and the overflow (dO) terms:
and at the same time predicts delays that d=du+ do. (3)
are very close to the results from the
Australian and Canadian formulas for
A Generalized Formula The overflow delay is called the incre-
oversaturated conditions. The HCM, Australian, and Canadian mental delay because of random arrivals
The HCM signalized intersection formulas for delay at traffic signals can and individual cycle failures in the
chapter states that its delay formula be generalized as the following two-term HCM. The usefulness of this concept is
yields reasonable results for values of .x equation: that an overflow queue formulation can
between 0.0 and 1.0. . . The equation be used as a common base for the for-
~ = 0.5C(1 u)
may be used with caution for values of x + 900 TX (x-1) mulas to predict delay, number of stops,
1UX [ and queue length as in the Australian
up to 1.2, but delay estimates for higher
values are not recommended. Although
traffic engineers do not design for over-
saturation, a delay formula that can be
+
where:
v (x- 1~ + m(x-xo)/QT
J (1)
method. 2 The relation between the av-
erage overflow queue (No) in vehicles
and the overflow delay (dO) in seconds is
expected to give reasonable results for 3600 do = NOIQ (4)
oversaturated, as well as undersaturated d = average overall delay (including
stop-start delays) in seconds per where Q is the capacity in veh.lhr. In this
conditions, is preferred because the lim-
vehicle, sense, Equation 1 is based on a gener-
itations of this type of formula are often
The values of the calibration parameters x HCM Alternative Australian Canadian Deterministicb
n, m, a, and b for the 1985 HCM , 1981
o 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
Australian, and 1984 Canadian,3
0.4 0.4 0.0 0.0 2.4
models are given in Table 1. The HCM
0.6 1.9 1.8 0.0 5.2
model differs from the other two models 0.8 8.4 9.7 5.5 12.6
with the x factor (n = 2) whereas the 0.9 17,6 19.9 16.5 21.8
Australian model differs from the other 0.95 26.6 28.5 25.9 29.5
two models with a nonzero XOparameter 1.0 40.2 40.2 38.8 40.2 0.0
(X. = 0.67 + sg/600). 1.1 85.4 72.0 72.4 70.3 45.0
The exact form of the HCM formula 1.2 155.5 110.5 112.1 108,0 90.0
differs from Equation 1 because a factor 1.4 376.0 195.0 197.5 191.8 180.0
of 1/1.3 = 0.77 is applied to convert the WVhererr =0, rn=8, c7=0.5, andb= O.
overall delay to stopped delay (i.e., it bFrom Equation 60,
I .._- Canadian
120 . Deterministic
ing numerical example although it is best
to leave this as a variable in the general
model. It will also be assumed, by way
of example, that c = 90 sec., g = 30 t
sec., s = 1500 veh.lhr., and therefore gl Overflow
c = 1/3, Q = 500 veh.lhr., and sg = de~y,
Rahmi Akcelik is
a principal re-
search scientist at
the Australian
Road Research
Board. His current
work is in the traf-
jic signal and fuel consumption areas of
research and development. He is a mem-
ber of ITE Technical Committee 5B-27j
Left-Turn Lane Storage Length Design
Criteria. He graduated from Istanbul
Technical University, Turkey, in 1968 and
received his Ph. D. degree in transporta-
tion engineering from the University of
Leeds, England, in 1974. He is a Member
of ITE.