Development of Composite Level of Service for Signalized Intersections Under Heterogeneous Traffic Conditions

Level of Service (LoS) is the easiest and widely used method for the assessment of quality of service provided to the road users. Depending upon the measure of LoS, appropriate actions may be initiated by the decision makers to enhance the better function of the system if necessary. But intersections are the critical location, where improvement measures for motorized vehicle users might affect the non-motorized vehicle users undesirably. This study focuses on controlled intersections and the efficiency measures of the signalized intersection. Many guidelines have provided the values of LoS of motorized and non-motorized traffic separately, even though they share the same space and time at the intersection. But to understand the efficiency of the whole intersection, all the users should be quantitatively measured with respect to a single unit. This research identifies performance parameters namely, vehicular volume, vehicular delay, pedestrian volume and pedestrian delay which directly influence the cycle time and the operating characteristics of signalized intersection. Empirical traffic models were developed between these performance measures and the best fit relationships were established. A Composite Level of Service (CLoS) which quantitatively measures all the users of an intersection irrespective of mode of transport is estimated using stopped delay of the motorized vehicles and pedestrians of the intersection. This CLoS helps to identify the efficiency of the whole signalized intersection in a single unit. The empirical models and CLoS was validated and application of this study was explained further using ground data.