Evaluation of Methodologies for the Design and Analysis of Freeway Weaving Sections

Weaving sections are common design elements on freeway facilities such as near ramps and freeway-to-freeway connectors. Traffic operational problems often exist at weaving areas even when traffic demands are less than capacity because of the complexity of vehicle interactions, resulting in poor level of service (LOS) and potential safety problems. The objective of the work described in this paper is to evaluate the new weaving analysis methodology developed for the forthcoming edition of the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM2010). The authors applied the method to 30 real-world weaving sections throughout the U.S. covering a wide range of design and traffic characteristics, for a total of 289 data points of volumes and speeds. The analysis of the results from the application of the method indicates that the method overpredicts the density of the weaving sections.