Travel time reliability with and without the dynamic use of hard shoulder: Field assessment from a French motorway

Abstract

Traffic management aims to ensure a high quality of service for most users by decreasing congestion and increasing safety. However, uncertainty regarding travel time decreases the quality of service and leads end-users to change their routes and schedules even when the average travel time is low. Indicators describing travel time reliability are being developed and should be used in the future both for the optimization and the assessment of active traffic management operation. This paper describes a managed lane experience on a motorway weaving section in France – hard shoulder running operation in rush hours. The paper is focused on travel time reliability indicators and their use for reliability assessment. It provides some discussions about the advantages and drawbacks of reliability indicators under different traffic conditions. It particularly shows the difference between using buffer times and buffer indexes. The paper also discusses the difficulty of interpreting the skew of travel time distribution for travel reliability.