01590686

Component

Design of discontinuous connecting lanes between the upstream road lane and approach lane is prevailing in most of Chinese cities. The present paper evaluates the safety and efficiency of the discontinuous lane design in the case that three lanes of the upstream are followed by four lanes of the approach to the intersection. The post-encroachment time are employed as the response variable representing the severity of traffic conflict in an ordered probit model with consideration of a number of latent influencing factors. It is found that the lane used by the vehicle in the upstream road segment has an important effect on traffic safety in the case of discontinuous lane design. The result demonstrates that continuous lane design connecting the upstream road lane and corresponding approach lane improves traffic safety, which could direct a vehicle to its target lane of approach under the relatively stable traffic volume between right and left turning flows. Meanwhile, it is innovatively found that discontinuous lane design is more suitable for improving traffic safety under the condition of dramatic stochastic fluctuation of turning flows across different signal phases. Applicable conditions for continuous lane design before the approach of an intersection are recommended on the basis of the volatility of turning flow.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ABE90 Standing Committee on Transportation in the Developing Countries.

01584066

16-4412

English

19p

2016

Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting

Web

Figures; References; Tables

Highway design; Highway safety; Signalized intersections; Traffic conflicts; Traffic lanes; Traffic volume; Turning traffic

China

Design; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Safety and Human Factors; I21: Planning of Transport Infrastructure; I73: Traffic Control

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2016 Paper #16-4412

PRP, TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Jan 12 2016 5:57PM