Sukhvir Singh Jain

Performance of FHWA model for predicting traffic noise: A case study of Metropolitan city, Lucknow (India)

Abstract Industrial and transport activities are the two major sources of noise pollution in any metropolitan city. Lucknow city, the capital of the largest populated state Uttar Pradesh in India has an area of 310 sq. km and is rapidly growing as a commercial, industrial and trading centre of northern India. The population of Lucknow city as per census 2001 is 22.45 Lacs. It is expected that by the year 2021 it will make 45 Lacs. The total vehicle population in Lucknow city on 31 March 2008, was nearly 1 million with almost 80% two wheelers, 12% cars, 1.36% three wheelers, 0.45% buses etc. A study was carried out to assess the existing status of noise levels and its impacts on the environment with a possibility of further expansion of the city. Ambient noise levels were measured at different locations selected on the basis of land use such as silence, heavy traffic and residential and commercial zones. It was found that noise levels at all selected locations were much higher (75–90 dB) than the prescribe...

Analysis of Flexible Pavement Serviceability Using ANN for Urban Roads

Serviceability is an indicator that represents the level of service a pavement provides to the users. This subjective opinion is closely related to objective aspects, which can be measured on the pavement’s surface. Modelling the present serviceability index is very important in pavement management system. In the present study, the present serviceability index (PSI) has been analyzed using artificial neural networks (ANN) for the flexible pavements of urban roads. The study area considered constitutes of 21 urban road sections for the Noida city in the NCR of New Delhi, capital of India. Field data collected includes slope variance, rut depth, patches, cracking and longitudinal cracking for two consecutive years on the selected road network. The developed ANN model has also been compared with model developed using multi-linear regression analysis.

Identifying Safety Factors Associated with Crash Frequency and Severity on Non Urban Four Lane Highway Stretch in India

ABSTRACT Crash scenario in India is quite alarming and presents an urgent need to understand and mitigate the risk contributing factors leading to these crashes. This in turn depends on the reliable quality data pertaining to crashes and its injury severity correlated with other contributing factors available for scientific analysis and modelling of crashes. Here an attempt has been made to develop a scientific database with in-depth crash details required for modelling of crashes for divided four lane nonurban highway. This article describes the effect of safety factors including highway geometric parameters, traffic parameters, temporal parameters, environment parameters, and different land use types on monthly crashes and crash severity model for 3 years (2011–2014) National Highway crash data. The results of the analysis present the critical safety parameters that need to be considered for highway development projects in future. This article also highlights the need and significance of detailed crash information in analyzing the crashes and understanding the effect of different engineering, temporal, and environmental parameters on crashes occurring in India. Crash frequency was predicted using Poisson-gamma model and crash severity using ordered probit model using Bayesian inference. The study results are applied to rank hazardous crash locations and to develop crash modification factors.

Calibration of safety performance function for crashes on inter-city four lane highways in India

Abstract There is a significant need to improve the highway safety during roadway planning, design and operations in developing countries like India. To receive appropriate consideration, safety needs to be dealt objectively within the transportation planning and highway design processes. Lack of available tools is a deterrent to quantify safety of a transportation facility during the planning or highway design process. The objective of this paper is to develop safety performance functions considering various elements involved in the planning, design and operation of a section on four-lane National Highway (NH)-58 located in the state of Uttarakhand, India. The mixed traffic on Indian multilane highways comes with a lot of variability within, ranging from different vehicle types to different driver characteristics. This could result in variability in the effect of explanatory variables on crashes across locations. Hence, explanatory variables for highway segment safety analysis considered were geometric characteristics like curvature change rate, slope change rate, transverse slope and traffic characteristics in the form of average daily traffic, light vehicle traffic, light commercial vehicle traffic, heavy vehicle traffic, two-wheelers, non-motorised traffic volume and operating speed were analysed against dependent variable as crash count per 200 m per year. Safety performance functions involving the explanatory variables are calibrated to predict crash frequency using Poisson Weibull technique and crash types are predicted using ordered logit model. Model results suggest that increase in traffic volume leads to higher probability of crash risk and traffic safety is significantly distorted by higher curvature change rate values.

A methodology for modelling urban traffic congestion based on ITS

This study attempts to make use of traffic behaviour on the aggregate level to estimate congestion on urban arterial and sub-arterial roads of a city exhibiting heterogeneous traffic conditions by breaking the route into independent segments and approximating the traffic flow behaviour of the segments. The expected travel time in making a trip is modelled against sectional traffic characteristics (flow and speed) at origin and destination points of road segments, and roadway and segment traffic characteristics such as diversion routes are also tried in accounting for travel time. Predicted travel time is then used along with free flow time to determine the state of congestion on the segments using a congestion index (CI). A development of this kind may help in understanding traffic and congestion behaviour practically using easily accessible inputs, limited only to the nodes, and help in improving road network planning and management.

Critical appraisal of web-based passenger information systems

Passenger information is vital for developing a user-friendly public transportation system. Websites are rapidly gaining popularity for public transport information dissemination, particularly due to their anytime-anywhere availability and their suitability for the multimodal applications and multilingual interface. Internet-based Passenger Information Systems (PIS), therefore, have become common in developed countries. The development of PIS for urban transport in India however, is at an experimental stage with very few operational deployments. This paper attempts to examine the current state-of-the-art features in Web-based passenger information systems in India and abroad, while critically evaluating the existing sources of public transport information in Ahmedabad as a case study. Ahmedabad, like several other Indian cities, has fixed-route regular bus services in conjunction with a recently-introduced bus rapid transit (BRT) system. The study compares the information content in printed transit timetables, Google Transit, and websites of the transit agencies, with the spatial dataset of public transport network prepared by integrating information from several sources. The results highlight the issues pertaining to accuracy, coverage, and timeliness of information contents available in developing countries, requiring innovative technological interventions to meet the growing information needs of commuters.