Effects of Using High Occupancy Vehicle Lanes on Safety Performance of Freeways
The use of High Occupancy Toll Lanes (HOT-Lanes) system has risen dramatically in the recent years. Applying this system helps relieve congestions and generate revenues to meet some of the transportation needs. In 2008, Florida converted its underused High-Occupancy-Vehicle (HOV-lanes) on I-95 to HOT-lanes called 95-Express. Although the HOT-Lanes offer users reliable travel times by managing traffic volume through dynamic tolls especially during peak hours, there is a lack of research that quantifies the traffic safety impact of this system. The main goal of this study is to investigate and provide an up-to-date traffic safety impact of the HOT-Lane system of the whole roadway segment. It is also to investigate for the first time the safety impact of applying this system on each of the HOT-lanes and on the General-Purpose Lanes (GP-Lanes) separately. The results proved that the HOV-to-HOT conversion does not significantly affect the safety performance of the roadway segments as a whole. However, there is an indication that the safety at the HOT-Lanes was significantly improved by reducing all crash categories. On the other hand, all crash categories have increased on the GP-Lanes; this is logical since the crashes remain the same for the whole segment (HOT-Lanes and GP-Lanes) and decreased on the HOT-Lanes, they are expected to increase on the GP-Lanes. Therefore, it can be concluded that the HOT-lanes are safer than the GP-Lanes. Overall, future research is strongly recommended to reach clear conclusions about the safety effectiveness of this system.
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Supplemental Notes:
- This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ANB25 Standing Committee on Highway Safety Performance.
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Corporate Authors:
500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC United States 20001 -
Authors:
- Abuzwidah, Muamer
- Abdel-Aty, Mohamed
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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; Maps; Photos; References; Tables;
- Pagination: 19p
- Monograph Title: TRB 96th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: High occupancy toll lanes; High occupancy vehicle lanes; Highway safety; Highway traffic control; Travel time
- Geographic Terms: Florida
- Subject Areas: Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Safety and Human Factors;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01628228
- Record Type: Publication
- Report/Paper Numbers: 17-06894
- Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
- Created Date: Mar 7 2017 10:25AM