Rural road traffic management

Rural roads cover a range of standards from gravel access roads to freeways. This section is primarily concerned with two lane two way sealed roads, which form the bulk of the network, carrying traffic volumes from less than 100 veh/d to well over 10,000 veh/d. For rural roads, it is difficult to separate design standards from traffic management strategies, since many management tasks involve changes to the physical road standards. The two are considered jointly in this section. The objectives of traffic management for rural roads are primarily to improve traffic flow and safety. Other objectives are concerned with road user costs, quality of service, and roadside environment. Pavement management issues also affect the timing and scale of traffic management improvements. Topics covered in this section are: traffic management for safety; traffic management to improve flow; other traffic management issues; and traffic simulation. The section concludes with a summary of principles of relevance to rural road traffic management (A).