00966545

Component

https://doi.org/10.3141/1847-06

http://scholar.google.com...kman&publication_year=2003

Congestion is a problem at many urban interchanges, particularly at diamond interchanges. A new interchange design, called the W-interchange, seeks to reduce congestion at a reasonable cost. Similar to the Michigan urban diamond interchange (MUDI), which uses U-turn structures, the W-interchange attempts to reduce delay by eliminating the left-turn movements onto and off of the cross street. The new W-interchange was compared with other, more commonly used designs for freeway-to-arterial interchanges, specifically the diamond interchange, the single point urban interchange (SPUI), and the MUDI. A major portion of the effort was a comparison of the travel times and stops across a range of traffic demands using a microscopic traffic simulation package. The results from the simulations indicated that the W-interchange minimized the number of stops and produced an overall travel time that was lower than the diamond interchange and comparable with the MUDI. The W-interchange had lower travel times than the SPUI for a few of the cases simulated, but generally the SPUI had lower travel times. A design of the W-interchange was created to estimate its construction and right-of-way cost. At about $14 million, the W-interchange costs about $4 million more than the SPUI and about $6 million more than the diamond interchange. Overall, the W-interchange performed well enough in the simulations and has enough other advantages to justify further research in the areas of cost, signing and marking, continuous frontage road operation, and a possible freeway-to-freeway design.

This paper appears in Transportation Research Record No. 1847, Operational Effects of Geometrics 2003.

English

p. 42-51

2003

Transportation Research Record

0309085837

Figures (3) ; References (13) ; Tables (6)

Alternatives analysis; Costs; Diamond interchanges; Interchanges; Microscopic traffic flow; Single point urban interchanges; Stopping; Traffic congestion; Travel time

Michigan urban diamond interchange; W interchanges

Finance; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; I73: Traffic Control

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Dec 8 2003 12:00AM

• COMPARISON OF OPERATIONS OF SINGLE-POINT AND TIGHT URBAN DIAMOND INTERCHANGES
• DETERMINATION OF STORAGE LENGTHS OF LEFT-TURN LANES AT UNSIGNALIZED INTERSECTIONS USING M/G2/1 QUEUING
• DEVELOPMENT OF DESIGN VEHICLES FOR HANG-UP PROBLEM
• EFFECTS ON ROAD SAFETY OF CONVERTING INTERSECTIONS TO ROUNDABOUTS: REVIEW OF EVIDENCE FROM NON-U.S. STUDIES
• OPTIMAL LOCATION OF U-TURN MEDIAN OPENINGS ON ROADWAYS
• SPEED DIFFERENTIAL AS A MEASURE TO EVALUATE THE NEED FOR RIGHT-TURN DECELERATION LANES AT UNSIGNALIZED INTERSECTIONS
• TRAFFIC PLANNING MODELS FOR SINGLE-POINT AND TIGHT DIAMOND INTERCHANGES