A Two-step Microscopic Traffic Safety Evaluation Model of Reserved Lanes Facilities: An Arterial Case Study

This study investigates the safety and operations of reserved lane facilities, with multiple interactions between vehicles. Currently, there are few studies that attempt to evaluate the impact on operations along the reserved lane with respect to the various geometric designs that allow for frequent locations of merging/diverging and crossing maneuvers. In this study, a VISSIM simulation model has been developed for a particular bus-lane arterial in Montreal area. The model was used to evaluate the safety and traffic operations along the corridor considering the status quo and some alternative design and prevailing traffic conditions scenarios, including different length of weaving sections and a modified geometric design of the entire bus-lane section. The simulation model was calibrated with real-world vehicle headways and its vehicle trajectories output were used in the Surrogate Safety Assessment Model (SSAM). In addition, an improvement of the SSAM model was achieved via a binary matrix calibration methodology in order to identify the vehicle conflicts more accurately. This improvement helps traffic analysts in properly identifying the potential traffic operations measures that contribute to a reduction of vehicular conflicts along the urban arterial. A comparison analysis has been conducted using a nearly one-kilometer bus-lane segment along the investigated arterial. The results show that traffic operations along the arterial, including the bus-lane, can be significantly improved if a different geometric alignment is deployed to reduce the number of interaction opportunities. For example, it is shown that establishing a 30-meter weaving section can significantly improve the vehicle's travel time as well as improve the safety performance.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AHB65 Operational Effects of Geometrics.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Tao, Huizhu
  • Foomani, Matin Giahi
  • Alecsandru, Ciprian
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 94th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2015-1-11 to 2015-1-15
• Date: 2015

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 17p
• Monograph Title: TRB 94th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Arterial highways; Bus lanes; Case studies; Geometric design; Microscopic traffic flow; Traffic conflicts; Traffic safety; Travel time; Weaving sections
• Identifier Terms: Surrogate Safety Assessment Model; VISSIM (Computer model)
• Geographic Terms: Montreal (Canada)
• Subject Areas: Design; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; I21: Planning of Transport Infrastructure; I73: Traffic Control;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01557697
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 15-3635
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 24 2015 11:27AM