Although a large scale of urban expressways have been constructed over the past years in China, the theory of capacity analyzing procedure for the urban expressway facilities are still not systematic and mature. The capacity influence areas of merging and diverging segments are primary to the study of the capacity of these facilities. The purpose of this paper is to get the influence area of merging segment. Through the videotaping method, a field study was conducted on Beijing's Fifth Ring Expressway. A large number of motor traffic operation data in merging segments were collected. After analyzing the traffic operating characteristics in depth, the variation of speed and lane changing times were recommended as two important indexes to define the influence area of merging and diverging segments in the urban expressway. And then, based on the surveyed data, we got the exact value of the range of influence areas of merging segments. These results will lay a foundation for urban expressway planning and designing, as well as to improve the traffic organization and management.
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