Essay on Building information modeling

Submitted By Raghavendra-Vandrang
Words: 9328
Pages: 38

Animal Driven Carts in Gaza City, Palestine Yahya Sarraj, Ph.D. (Corresponding Author) Associate Professor of Transportation Israa Jadili, B.Sc. Civil Engineer HYPERLINK mailtoysarraj@iugaza.edu.ps ysarraj@iugaza.edu.ps Islamic University of Gaza P.O. Box 108, Gaza, Palestine Tel 0097082860700 Ext. 1040 Fax 0097082860800 The purpose of this paper is to estimate PCU values for buses and animal-driven carts at signalized intersections in Gaza City. PCU (or passenger-car equivalent unit, PCEU) is a factor used to convert all vehicle types other than passenger car into passenger car. The research team collected the required data at three main signalized intersections in Gaza City using a digital video recorder. To calculate PCU values the headway method was used. Statistical analysis of the results shows that a PCU value for buses was found to be 2.0 while that for animal-driven carts was 1.67. The PCU for a bus in Gaza was found to be similar to that in UK but different from India. The PCU for an animal-driven cart in Gaza was found to be different from that in India. Local traffic engineers may now use these results with more confidence of their local applicability. However, it is recommended to conduct further research on other vehicle types as well as to confirm the obtained PCU value for animal-driven carts. KEYWORDS Passenger car unit (PCU), Headway Method, bus, animal-driven cart, Gaza, Palestine. Introduction Different vehicle types occupy different spaces on the road, move at different speeds, and start at different accelerations. Furthermore, the behavior of drivers of the different types of vehicles may also vary considerably. This poses a problem for designing roads, intersections, and traffic signals. A uniform measure of vehicles is thus necessary to estimate traffic volume and capacity of roads under mixed traffic flow. This is rather difficult to achieve unless the different vehicle types are stated in terms of a common standard vehicle unit. For this reasons, the concept of Passenger Car Unit (PCU) or Passenger Car Equivalent (PCE) was developed to become as a common practice to convert the other vehicle types into PCUs. It is generally expressed as PCU per hour, PCU per lane per hour, or PCU per kilometer length of lane. Transportation engineers and professionals in Palestine and more specifically in Gaza Strip do not have local standards to use for PCU values. International standards provided by the Highway Capacity Manual 1 adopted in the USA and standards provided by the Department of Transport in the UK are usually used. These values are being used without local validation. In this work the authors are trying to provide local validation for some PCU values. The main objective of this paper is to determine the value of passenger car units for animal-driven carts and buses at signalized intersections in Gaza City. Like many other cities in developing countries, Gaza City traffic includes animal-driven carts in addition to other motorized vehicles. The paper will also compare the estimated Gaza PCU values to those from United Kingdom and India. local statistics It is important to present relevant local statistics showing the composition of traffic flow in Gaza Strip. This is to show the percentage of buses and animal driven carts in traffic flow. A report published by the Ministry of Planning in 2010 included several important local statistics 2. This report indicated that the records of the Ministry of Transportation show that the total number of registered vehicles in Gaza Strip in 2009 is 64,938 vehicles. It also shows that traffic counts on Salah El Din Road and Haroun El Rasheed Road indicate that the traffic composition consists of 0.99 and 1.60 buses and 2.03 and 2.25 animal driven carts respectively. On some main roads and intersections the percentage of buses and animal-driven carts reaches more than 3 and 5.8 respectively causing several problems to traffic movement.