Speed at Partially and Fully Stop-Controlled Intersections

Conversion of “two-way stop” intersections into “four-way stop”/“all-way stop” intersections is a popular road safety counter-measure typically deployed in dense, urban environments. This is not surprising, given pedestrian concerns with crossing increasingly congested uncontrolled approaches and given how relatively cost-effective it is to install stop signs and update road markings in order to convert from partial to full stop-control. However, this practice sometimes contradicts existing traffic control guides, especially if different design warrants address conflicting needs: for example, when increasing safety at the expense of capacity. To further understand the safety impact of partial and full-stop control, nearly 65,000 road users at 77 Montréal stop-controlled and uncontrolled approaches are studied by instrumenting each intersection so as to collect high-resolution approach trajectories, thereby profiling the approach of all motorists with and without the presence of pedestrians. The study determines, among other things, that stop location varies considerably between intersections and reveals a mean minimum motion speed of 11.5 km/h at stop-controlled approaches and possible prevalence of the “rolling-stop”. Fully stop-controlled intersections are found to have a further decrease in speed of 3 km/h, suggesting that existing stops might benefit from full stop-control, but the greatest benefit of conversion lies with the conversion of individual uncontrolled approaches.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AHB50 Standing Committee on Traffic Control Devices.
• Authors:
  • St-Aubin, Paul G
  • Ledezma-Navarro, Bismarck
  • Labbe, Aurélie
  • Fu, Ting
  • Saunier, Nicolas
  • Miranda-Moreno, Luis
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 97th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2018-1-7 to 2018-1-11
• Date: 2018

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; Maps; Photos; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 15p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Highway safety; Highway traffic control; Intersections; Multiway stop signs; Speed
• Geographic Terms: Montreal (Canada)
• Subject Areas: Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01661419
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 18-05438
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 27 2018 9:46AM