KEY COMPONENTS OF A MOTORCYCLE - TRAFFIC SYSTEM – A Study Along the Motorcycle Path in Malaysia

The key road safety problem in developing world like ASEAN countries is motorcycle safety. Motorcycle is a popular mode of personal travel and formed as the major road user. Studies proved that segregation is the best engineering practice to save lives of motorcyclists. Acknowledging these benefits, the Malaysian government adopted a policy to provide motorcycle facility along its new highways and federal roads. The need to provide this special facility brought to light on the deficiencies in studies of motorcycle traffic sciences and facility design. This paper attempts to establish the characteristics of key components of a motorcycle-traffic system in Malaysia, i.e. the motorcycle/rider unit, motorcyclist space requirement and riding manner along motorcycle paths of various lane widths. It serves as useful input in developing design guidelines of motorcycle facilities for highly motorcycled countries in their effort to curb motorcycle safety problems. Digital recordings of motorcyclists along the existing motorcycle path in Malaysia were captured at six sites and transcribed into two types of motorcycle-sizes. Basic dimensions of a motorcycle/rider unit were directly measured. The separation distance between side-by-side motorcyclists was obtained by employing the digital recording technique. The motorcyclist operating space was then established. Three-stages of field and experimented studies was conducted to observe the motorcyclists riding manner along various lane widths from low to high volume conditions. The smalland medium-sized type motorcycles (150c.c. and below) made up 99% of the motorcycles population in Malaysia. A static motorcyclist measured about 0.8m in width, 2.0m in length, and requires an operating width of 1.3m. At a lane width of 1.7m or below, motorcycle flow applies the lane or headway concept. Above this optimum value, motorcycle flow adopted the space concept. This implied that a motorcycle path should be more than 1.7m wide to allow two motorcyclists to pass each other.