A closer examination of overtaking prohibitions for trucks

摘要

In the Netherlands, an increasingly used traffic management measure is to prohibit trucks to overtake during peak hours. Real-life assessment of this measure shows mixed results, especially from the viewpoint of a more efficient roadway use. The aim of this paper is to explain these results. One aspect of the analysis is considering differences in car-following behaviour between mixed-class vehicle pairs. It appears that possible increases in roadway capacity due to overtaking prohibitions for trucks are to a large extent determined by the traffic conditions and traffic flow composition. Secondly, by application of a recently developed macroscopic flow model for multiclass multilane traffic operations, the homogenising effects resulting from trucks on the lefr roadway lane are discussed.