Sub-problem 5b: Future Analysis of 10-Mile Segment of U.S. 95 With Direct Recognition of the Hamlet

What common measure should be used to determine the performance of the facility throughout the various sections? As described in Chapter 28 of the HCM, mean delays can be converted into travel times to describe the performance of the system. This is what we will do here.

The main observation in the context of this analysis is that the delays to the main street (highway traffic) through and right-turn movements are not substantial. Delay summed across all intersections totals 2.8 seconds in the northbound direction and 4.8 seconds in the northbound direction. Control delay accounts for the time associated with acceleration and deceleration time, move-up time, and stopped time. If we assume that the through vehicles are traveling at 35 mph (which implies 103 seconds to traverse the one-mile length of the hamlet), the travel time northbound will be 105.8 seconds (1.76 minutes) and southbound it will be 107.8 seconds (1.80 minutes), which translates into a travel time of 34.0 and 33.4 mph respectively and an average of 33.7 mph.

The overall travel time is now 12.5 minutes compared to 12.0 in the hypothetical base case and 13.2 in the earlier attempt to account for the hamlet. The average travel speed is 47.9 mph and  PTSF is 67.7%. In the previous discussion, we are unable to provide a LOS estimate for the entire corridor because we are unable to estimate PTSF for the entire corridor.