Passenger Car Equivalents for Heavy Vehicles at Roundabouts. A Synthesis Review

Abstract

Passenger Car Equivalents (PCEs in the following) are used to transform a mixed fleet of vehicles into a fleet of equivalent passenger cars and to analyze capacity and level-of-service of roads and intersections. Most roundabouts guidelines propose constant values for PCEs but a single PCE value can result improper under heterogeneous traffic conditions. PCEs should be vary with traffic and road conditions and consequently PCEs applied to undersaturated traffic conditions can overestimate the heavy vehicle effect or be not sensitive to the traffic level or characteristics of heavy vehicles. Compared to other at-grade intersections, the interaction between the operational performances of the heavy vehicles and the geometric features at roundabouts can produce significant impacts on the heavy vehicle paths and traffic operations due to the curvilinear nature of the roundabout design. Literature presents various methods of estimation to obtain PCE values for heavy vehicles. The focus of this paper is to review statistical methods and traffic simulation studies based on microscopic approaches used to calculate PCEs for heavy vehicles driving roundabouts. Effects on capacity and estimates of PCEs based on models currently employed in roundabout analysis are also compared. The results obtained in this study aim at providing an overview of the existing knowledge concerning the estimation of PCEs at roundabouts and can represent a guideline for transportation engineers in planning, design and capacity analysis of roundabouts that operate under conditions of mixed traffic.