Effects of Winter Weather on Traffic Operations and Optimization of Signalized Intersections
Adverse winter weather has always been a cause of traffic congestion and road collisions. To mitigate the negative impacts of winter weather, transportation agencies are under increasing pressure to introduce weather responsive traffic management strategies. Currently, most traffic signal control systems are designed for normal weather conditions and are therefore suboptimal in terms of efficiency and safety for controlling traffic during winter snow events due to changes in traffic patterns and driver behaviors. The main objective of this research is to explore how to modify traffic signal control under adverse weather conditions to increase traffic efficiency and 8road safety. This research consists of two main components. First, the authors examine the impacts of winter weather on three key traffic parameters, i.e., saturation flow rate, start-up lost time, and free flow speed. Secondly, they investigate the potential benefits of implementing weather-specific signal control plans for isolated intersections as well as arterial corridors. Two case studies are conducted, each with varying levels of traffic demand and winter event severity, to compare the performance of different signal plans. Evaluation results from both Synchro and VISSIM show that implementing such signal plans is most beneficial for intersection with a medium level of traffic demand. It is also found that the benefit of implementing weather-responsive plans was more compelling an arterial-corridor level with signal coordination than at an isolated-intersection level.
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Supplemental Notes:
- This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AHD65 Standing Committee on Winter Maintenance.
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Corporate Authors:
500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC United States 20001 -
Authors:
- Lu, Zhengyang
- Fu, Liping
- Kwon, Tae J
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Conference:
- Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting
- Location: Washington DC, United States
- Date: 2017-1-8 to 2017-1-12
- Date: 2017
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Digital/other
- Features: Figures; References; Tables;
- Pagination: 17p
- Monograph Title: TRB 96th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Environmental impacts; Highway operations; Optimization; Signalized intersections; Winter
- Subject Areas: Environment; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01628108
- Record Type: Publication
- Report/Paper Numbers: 17-01491
- Files: PRP, TRIS, TRB, ATRI
- Created Date: Mar 7 2017 10:25AM