Influence of Heavy Vehicles on Traffic Flow in Freeway Work Zones

The proportion of heavy vehicles is very high on Chinese highways. Slowly moving heavy vehicles cause additional delay in a work zone especially when there is only one open lane in the work zone. In this paper, we study traffic delay in a work zone considering the influence of heavy vehicles. We found that there are four key factors contributing to the delay of non heavy vehicles; that the marginal influence of heavy vehicles is constant when heavy vehicles do not interact, decreases when heavy vehicles interact; and that the influence of the work zone’s length decreases when the proportion of heavy vehicles is high.