Evaluation of Current Service Areas’ Location to Improve Freight Car’s Safety: A Case Study of Seohaean Expressway

Abstract

The seriousness of traffic accidents occurring on expressways means the need for safe driving of freight vehicles. In order to prevent drowsy driving due to long-time driving of trucks, the corresponding Act was revised in 2016 to ensure that truck drivers should take at least 30 minutes of rest after four hours of continuous driving. In addition, the Korea Expressway Corporation, an expressway operator, is trying to provide sufficient rest areas for truck drivers. For here, it is important to construct them in appropriate locations on the truck route to avoid a waste of budget. Therefore, this study analyzed Toll Collection System (TCS) Origin/Destination (O/D) data and selected the most overlapping traffic links from ranking 1st to 4th for both directions, and showed the most appropriate locations using ArcView. As a result, the service areas with truck parking spots are located within the range of both directions, but there is only one sleeping shelter in the range. In addition, the traffic volume in the direction to Mokpo (South bound) shows twice more than that to Seoul (North bound). Therefore, it is necessary to prioritize the service areas’ location within the selected range first and south bound direction requires more facilities. For the future research, the authors recommend to study about adequacy size of service area with the analysis of truck driver’s behaviors. It is expected to contribute making a decision for investment priority of the budget.