The New 2010 Highway

Capacity Manual
Tom Creasey, P.E.
TRB Highway Capacity and Quality of Service Committee

Highway Capacity Manual (HCM)

Most widely referenced and best selling
document of the Transportation Research
Board
HCM 2000: 16,000+ copies sold worldwide
Model for similar capacity manuals in other
countries

History

1950
First document to quantify capacity

1965
Level of Service concept introduced
Chapter on bus transit

1985

Modern HCM
Further refined LOS concept
Major research since 1965
Expanded transit chapter
Pedestrian, bicycle chapters
Updates: 1992, 1994, 1997

2000
Substantial increase in volume and
breadth
Systematic and consistent basis for
assessing capacity and LOS
Point, facility, corridor/area-wide
analyses
1,200 pages

Purpose of the HCM

Provide a set of methods and procedures for
evaluating multimodal performance of highway
and street facilities in terms of operational
measures and QOS or LOS indicators.

Objectives:
1. Define performance measures and survey methods for
traffic characteristics
2. Provide methods for estimating and predicting performance
measures
3. Explain effect on multimodal transportation

Intended Use

Levels of Analysis

Operations
Design
Planning/Preliminary Engineering

Travel Modes

Auto
Pedestrian
Bicycle
Transit (multimodal urban street)

Spatial Coverage
Points
Segments
Facilities

Temporal Coverage
Undersaturated
Oversaturated

Targeted Users
1. Engineers Traffic Operations And Highway Design
2. Transportation Planners
HCM also useful to:
Management personnel
Educators
Noise and air quality specialists
Elected officials (HCM for Dummies)
Regional land use planners
Special interest groups

Whats New

Research
Organization
Multimodal
Perception-Based Performance Measures

Research Basis for the 2010 HCM

NCHRP 360

Capacity and Quality of

Service of Interchange
Ramp Terminals

NCHRP 379

Measuring and Predicting

the Performance of
Automobile Traffic on
Urban Streets

NCHRP 364

Highway Capacity
Manual Applications
Guide

NCHRP 382

Default Values for

Capacity and Quality of
Service Analyses

NCHRP 365

Applying Roundabouts in
the United States

NCHRP 385

Guidance for the Use of

Alternative Traffic Analysis
Tools in Highway Capacity
Analyses

NCHRP 370

Multimodal Level of
Service Analysis for
Urban Streets

NCHRP 392

Production of the Year

2010 Highway Capacity
Manual

NCHRP 375

Analysis of Freeway
Weaving Sections

FHWA

Level-of-Service
Estimation Method For
Shared-use Paths

Organization
HCM 2000
Part I. Overview
Part II. Concepts
Part III. Methodologies
Part IV. Corridor and Areawide
Analyses
Part V. Simulation and Other
Models

HCM 2010
Volume I. Concepts
Volume II. Uninterrupted Flow
Volume III. Interrupted Flow
Volume IV. Applications
(electronic only)

Multimodal Approach
No stand-alone Pedestrian, Bicycle and Transit chapters
Multimodal Urban Streets chapter
Transit-specific Moved to Transit Capacity and Quality of
Service Manual (TCQSM)

Perception-Based Performance Measures

Since 1985, LOS defined by measures of operational conditions

and traveler perceptions of conditions
Single LOS measure
1.
2.
3.

Directly measured in field

Perceived by travelers
Affected by facility owners

Research since HCM 2000: Is single operational measure

sufficient?
Can travelers really perceive operational measures and 6 distinct
levels of service?
How does quality of service differ from level of service?
service

Methodological Changes Uninterrupted Flow

Method

Change

Freeway Facilities

Similar to HCM 2000 (minor changes)

Basic Freeway Segments

Similar to HCM 2000 (minor changes)

Freeway Weaving Segments Complete update

Ramps & Ramp Junctions

Revised

Multilane Highways

No change

Two-Lane Highways

Revised

Methodological Changes Interrupted Flow

Method

Change

Urban Street Facilities

New method

Urban Street Segments

Complete Update

Signalized Intersections

Revised

Unsignalized Intersections

Revised

Interchange Ramp Terminals

Complete update

Off-Street Ped/Bike Facilities

Similar to HCM 2000 (minor changes)

Highlighted Changes

Signalized Intersections
Interchange Ramp Terminals
Urban Streets
Roundabouts

 New incremental queue

accumulation (IQA) method to
calculate d1 (uniform delay) term
and Q1 (queue length) term
Actuated controller modeling
operation procedure
Left-turn pocket overflow check
Ped/bike LOS methods moved to
this chapter

Queue (veh)

Signalized Intersections

Interchange Ramp Terminals

Most (but not all) interchange types

LOS determination based on OriginsDestinations
Average Queue Storage Ratio for each lane
group
V/C for each lane group
Average Control Delay for each lane group,
and for each Origin-Destination (the sum of
lane group delays)
LOS F when:
Delay > 120 sec;
v/c > 1.0; or
RQ > 1.0

DelayH = dWBTH + dWBLT

Urban Streets
Replacement for HCM2000 Chapter 15
2 groundbreaking research studies
NCHRP 3-70, Multimodal Level of Service for Urban Streets
NCHRP 3-79, Measuring and Predicting Performance of Automobile Traffic on
Urban Streets

Challenge: Combine the results from these studies into new Urban
Streets chapters
Urban Street Segments
Urban Street Facilities

NCHRP 3-79, Measuring and Predicting Performance of

Automobile Traffic on Urban Streets
New models to predict free-flow speed, running time on
Urban Street segments
Delay due to mid-block turns
Coordinated-Actuated signal control
Stop rate

NCHRP 3-70, Multimodal Level of Service for Urban Streets

Complete Streets analysis

LOS determinations for autos, transit (rider), bicycles and pedestrians
No aggregate Multimodal LOS
Interaction among individual modes

LOS based on traveler

perception
Auto LOS model includes
stops/mile

Roundabouts
Replaces HCM 2000 model,
which produced only capacity
and v/c (single lane)
HCM 2010 Study of 31 U.S.
sites
Control delay predicted similar
to signalized and STOPcontrolled intersections
Multiple lanes; LOS for critical
lane on each approach

Overarching Issues

Quality of Service vs. Level of Service

HCM2000 Definitions:
Quality of Service
A performance indicator of a traveler's perceived satisfaction with the trip.
Level of Service
A qualitative measure describing operational conditions within a traffic stream,
based on service measures such as speed and travel time, freedom to
maneuver, traffic interruptions, comfort, and convenience.

How do these relate?

Opposing Schools of Thought:

Level of Service
A

LOS is a stratification
of QOS

Quality of Service

Operational Performance Measures

A

LOS

QOS

Traveler Perception
1

LOS performance
based, while QOS
based on traveler
perception

What the Highway Capacity and Quality of Service

Committee Decided Adopted Motions:
1. QOS is a description of how well a transportation facility or
service is operating from a travelers perspective.
2. LOS is a quantitative stratification of a performance
measure or measures that represents) QOS in a six letter
grade scale with A describing the best quality and F
describing the worst quality.

LOS/QOS Concepts
LOS should be defined by service measure(s), that relate to
travelers perceptions and are useful to the operating
agencies.
LOS F shall be defined to occur when either the service
measure(s) exceeds some pre-defined threshold and/or
when demand exceeds capacity.
There are multiple important performance measures,
however, there is one an only one quality-of-service
stratification scheme in the HCM, and that is level-ofservice.

The Level of Service Issue

NCHRP 3-70 and other research have shown that travelers
do not perceive 6 discrete levels of service
Should models be stretched to produce 6 levels of
service?
What about beyond LOS F?
What about other methods (Uninterrupted Flow) that have
not involved traveler perception studies?
Abuse of LOS Should we do away with it?

Early Products
NCHRP Report 599, Default Values for Highway Capacity and Level
of Service Analyses (2008) Available online
Highway Capacity Manual Applications Guidebook (2003)
Real-world case studies applying the HCM
Electronic only: www.hcmguide.com

Methodology for Evaluating the Operational Performance of

Interchange Ramp Terminals, Transportation Research Record:
Journal of the Transportation Research Board, Volume 1920/2005
(2005); www.ahb40.org

Production Schedule
Highway Capacity and Quality of Service Committee
chapter review, acceptance to be completed Summer
2009
Submittal to TRB for editing, production 3QTR 2009
Printing and release - 2010