The standard reference for highway capacity analysis is the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM), published by the Transportation Research Board (TRB). The current edition addresses the design, operational analysis and planning of freeways, rural two-lane and multilane highways, intersections, arterial streets, and pedestrian and bicycle facilities. The basic procedures for analyzing these facilities are reviewed in this section. The HCM also contains a chapter on transit facilities, but it is not reviewed in this section.

Aplication of many of the procedures in the HCM requires extensive use of numerous charts and nomographs. Space limitations preclude the reproduction of these charts and nomographs in this chapter. Therefore, like much of the material in this chapter, the material in this section is in the form of a review of basic procedures with reference to key equations, nomographs, tables, and so on in the HCM. It is recommended that the reader consult the HCM (TRB, 2000) directly for additional background and details. Note that two versions of the HCM are available, one in metric units and the other in U.S. Customary units.

The HCM contains worksheets and numerous sample calculations to aid the analyst in becoming familiar with the procedures. Rather than reproducing those example problems in this section, the reader is referred directly to the HCM.