Car Drivers’ Experienced Level of Service on Rural Roads and Urban Streets

by Søren Underlien Jensen and Kristian Skoven Pedersen

Abstract

6th International Symposium on Highway Geometric Design

The Danish Road Directorate sponsored a study to develop methods for quantifying car drivers experienced level of service (CLOS) on rural roads and urban streets. The results provide a measure of how well these segments accommodate car travel.

In order to determine how traffic operations, geometric conditions, and other variables affect car driver satisfaction, 262 randomly selected respondents were shown 96 video clips of rural road and urban street segments filmed from a driving passenger car. Video clips consist of high-resolution video filmed through windshield, side windows including exterior mirrors and rear window. Video clips also include a GPS based speedometer. Respondents rated video clips on a six-point scale ranging from very satisfied to very dissatisfied. This resulted in 5,514 useable ratings. 450-500 variables describe respondent answers to six background questions and the video clips i.e. roadway segment geometries, traffic operations, surroundings, weather, etc.

Car driver satisfaction models were developed using cumulative logit regression and generalized linear modeling. The developed models include 1-15 variables, which relate significantly (p ≤ 0.05) to satisfaction ratings. These variables are average travel speed, speed limit, vertical alignment, pedestrians and parked cars per km, presence of median, edge lines, sidewalks and bicycle facilities, width of carriageway and median, drivers age, sex, type of residence and yearly mileage. Models return percentage splits of the six levels of satisfaction or average satisfaction. These splits or averages are transformed into a level of service (LOS).

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