Influence of the Reconstruction of the Sofia Ring Road on the Travel Time of Fire and Rescue Service Vehicles

The travel time of emergency vehicles is an important parameter in emergency rescues. In this paper, the aim is to determine the impact of the reconstruction of a road section on the travel time of specialized vehicles with a special traffic regime. A specific evaluation methodology has been developed. It is applied to a section of the existing Sofia Ring Road II-18 (the existing two-lane road will be reconstructed to 6-lane one with two local lanes). Specific routes are considered, starting from the fire stations, passing through the considered section of the road, ending to the presumed places of the incidents. The travel time for these routes (depending on the speed) is calculated for pre- and post-repair, respectively. From the obtained results it can be seen that the performed reconstruction has a significant impact (about 15%) on reducing travel times along the considered routes. The repaired section affects only the net travel time of the total reaction time to get to the affected area. A comparative analysis was made in terms of travel times only for the routes planned for consideration.