Average vehicles length in two-lane urban roads: A case study in budapest

The length of vehicles is one of the most important parameters in traffic flow modeling and traffic control in many aspects such as speed estimation using the outputs of single loop detectors, length based vehicle classification and density estimation. In the current study, the average length of vehicles in two-lane urban roads of Budapest, Hungary has been measured by the means of manual observation method. Having measured the average vehicles length, their relevant effective vehicles length is manually calibrated within the day that is applicable to the local operating agencies. The obtained results showed that the local operating agencies have to set different effective vehicles length during the day in order to avoid possible estimation errors. Moreover, the heterogeneity of the traffic stream in the investigation area was evident from the results.