Planning and Preliminary Engineering Applications Guide to the Highway Capacity Manual
Corresponding Author: Thomas Creasey, Stantec Consulting Services Inc.
Presented By: Thomas Creasey, Stantec
Abstract
Published as NCHRP Report 825, the Planning and Preliminary Engineering Applications Guide to the Highway Capacity Manual is the first comprehensive guidebook designed to help planners and transportation engineers apply methodologies in the Highway Capacity Manual to common planning and preliminary engineering analyses. These common applications include multimodal corridor analyses, long range transportation plans, development of service volume tables, travel demand forecasting and modeling, alternatives screening, predicting traffic control, and roadway system monitoring. The document also includes guidance on the development and selection of default input values for highway capacity analyses.
The guidebook demonstrates planning application of HCM methods through three case studies: 1) Freeway Master Plan (screening for service volume problems, forecasting V/C hotspots, estimating speeds and travel times, estimating queues, predicting travel time reliability problems and comparing over-congested alternatives); 2) Arterial BRT Analysis (computing critical intersection V/C ratios, estimating auto and BRT speeds, predicting queue hot spots, and estimating pedestrian, bicycle and transit LOS); and 3) Long-Range Transportation Plan Analysis (estimating capacity and free-flow speeds for model input, HCM-based volume-delay functions for model input, predicting densities, queues and delays, and predicting reliability).
The guidebook also provides a practical introduction to detailed methods of the Highway Capacity Manual, including the new HCM 6th Edition.