Title: Efficiency and safety assessment of suburban highway access management

Authors: Kejun Long; Junjun Wei; Nuo Xu; Lingyun Xiang; Xi Duan

Addresses: Hunan Key Laboratory of Smart Roadway and Cooperative Vehicle-Infrastructure Systems, Changsha University of Science and Technology, Changsha 410004, China ' School of Traffic and Transportation Engineering, Changsha University of Science and Technology, Changsha 410004, China ' School of Traffic and Transportation Engineering, Changsha University of Science and Technology, Changsha 410004, China ' School of Computer and Communication Engineering, Changsha University of Science and Technology, Changsha 410114, Hunan, China ' Department of Civil and Coastal Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville FL 32611, Florida, USA

Abstract: Congestion and traffic accidents often take place at the entrances and exits of highways. However, reasonable access management and design can greatly mitigate congestion and accidents. This paper discusses the field of suburban highway access management by introducing three typical suburban highways access management models, including the two-way stop-controlled intersection, simplified restricted crossing U-turn (RCUT), and interchange with right-in right-out. To ensure better efficiency and safety, the simulations were conducted in VISSIM and Surrogate Safety Assessment Model (SSAM) software. The travel time, delay, and throughput are used as the efficiency indexes, and the traffic conflicts are used as safety indexes to quantify the access management performance. The results show that the total delay at an interchange with right-in right-out decreased by 40.5%, and the conflict decreased by 50.0% more than a two-way stop-controlled intersection design, as well as the total delay decreased by 30.7% and the conflict decreased by 67.4% more than a simplified RCUT design.

Keywords: access management; traffic simulation; Surrogate Safety Assessment Model; SSAM.

DOI: 10.1504/IJES.2021.111978

International Journal of Embedded Systems, 2021 Vol.14 No.1, pp.65 - 71

Received: 25 Feb 2019
Accepted: 05 Oct 2019
Published online: 22 Dec 2020 *

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