IMPROVING SAFETY IN THE LINCOLN TUNNEL

This paper provides an overview and summary of the access metering experiment conducted at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's Lincoln Tunnel facality during the Fall of 1993. The purpose of the experiment was to determine if improvements in the tunnel's productivity, trip time, and accident rate could be obtained through the use of access metering. The accident rate at the Lincoln Tunnel is comparable to other urban, highly-constricted and congested river crossing facilities. This accident rate is much higher than that typical of unconstricted interstate highway facilities. Approximately 40 million vehicles accumulate nearly 100 million vehicle miles of travel annually including the approach and tunnel roadways. This traffic flow experiences about 1,000 accidents per year. This is a rate of ten accidents per million vehicle miles traveled. The experiment's results showed that access metering reduced the stream turbulence by approximately 40%. This less turbulent flow supported both a higher throughput and a reduced average trip time. The test period was too short in duration to demonstrate a statistically significant decrease in the accident rate. However, the reduction in flow turbulence decreased motorist uncertainty, briging about smoother traffic movement. (A) For the covering abstract of the conference see IRRD 867839.

• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Institute

  Technion City
  Haifa,   Israel 
• Authors:
  • Yagoda, H N
  • EWAN, D
  • CONOVER, E
  • Saracena, A
• Conference:
  • PROCEEDINGS OF THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SAFETY AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE 21ST CENTURY: LESSONS FROM THE PAST, SHAPING THE FUTURE, NOVEMBER 7-10, 1994, TEL AVIV, ISRAEL
• Publication Date: 1994

Language

• English

Media Info

• Pagination: p. 609-18

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Access roads; Conferences; Crash rates; Evaluation and assessment; Safety; Traffic control; Traffic flow; Travel time; Trip length; Tunnels
• Geographic Terms: United States
• ITRD Terms: 435: Access road; 1612: Accident rate; 8525: Conference; 9020: Evaluation (assessment); 697: Journey time; 1665: Safety; 654: Traffic control; 671: Traffic flow; 3374: Tunnel; 8122: USA
• Subject Areas: Bridges and other structures; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00675873
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: Institute for Road Safety Research, SWOV
• Files: ITRD, ATRI
• Created Date: Apr 12 1995 12:00AM