Title: Operational Assessment of Joint and Conventional Lane Merge Configurations for Freeway Work Zones
Abstract: Inefficient operation of traffic at work zone areas typically leads to increase in travel time delays, queue length, fuel consumption, number of forced merges, and roadway accidents. In order to improve the operational efficiency of work zones, research on freeway work zones constantly seeks to develop different lane merge control strategies, in addition to the conventional lane merge configuration, recommended by the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. This study evaluates the operational efficiency of a newly proposed configuration, joint lane merge (JLM), and compares its performance with the conventional lane merge (CLM) configuration. A simulation model (VISSIM) was calibrated with real-world data from an existing work zone on I-55 and used to simulate a work zone area with both configurations. A total of 25 different scenarios were generated from five different levels of demand and five truck percentages. Performance measures in terms of total throughput and average delay time were compared and statistical analysis was conducted to determine if the differences in operational performance between both configurations were significant. The results showed that the joint lane merge outperformed the conventional lane merge by a maximum of 12.6% improvement in throughput and 94.83% reduction in average delay time at high levels of demand. The results also indicate that the conventional lane merge configurations are more suitable for sites with relatively high percentage of trucks, while joint lane merge configurations are more suitable for sites with low percentage of trucks.
Publication Year: 2010
Publication Date: 2010-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 1
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