Partially Limited Access Design Methodology for Freeway High Occupancy Vehicle Lanes

High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) facilities have traditionally been designed with either limited access or continuous access control. Studies have shown the pros and cons of each design in terms of safety, mobility, environment, and enforcement, among other factors. With a focus on improving the operational performance of HOV facilities, this paper proposes a new design called partially limited access control where continuous access is generally provided along a freeway to achieve higher travel speed while buffers between the HOV and general-purposed (GP) lanes are strategically placed on selected freeway segments to accommodate higher throughput on those segments. The placement of buffers is primarily to reduce the impact of HOV cross-weave flow on the capacity of GP lanes. In this research, a methodology for determining the location and length of buffers in the partially limited access control was developed. It was applied to a 13-mile section of HOV facility on SR-210 E in Southern California, which were then evaluated in traffic microsimulation. The results show that the partially limited access control increases the throughput (represented by total vehicle miles traveled or VMT) and decreases the delay (represented by total vehicle hours traveled or VHT) of the freeway as compared with the limited access and continuous access controls. As a result, the overall efficiency (represented by average travel speed calculated as VMT/VHT) of the freeway with partially limited access HOV facility is 19% and 4% higher than that of the freeway with limited access and continuous access HOV facility, respectively, under the baseline traffic demand.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AHB35 Standing Committee on Managed Lanes.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Shan, Xiaonian
  • Hao, Peng
  • Boriboonsomsin, Kanok
  • Wu, Guoyuan
  • Barth, Matthew
  • Chen, Xiaohong
• 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; Maps; References;
• Pagination: 17p
• Monograph Title: TRB 96th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Barriers (Roads); Freeways; General purpose lanes; High occupancy vehicle lanes; Highway capacity; Interchange ramps; Traffic flow; Traffic simulation; Vehicle miles of travel; Weaving sections
• Geographic Terms: California
• Subject Areas: Design; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01626749
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 17-04844
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 27 2017 9:26AM