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Title:

Route Diversion as Real-Time Crash Prevention Strategy on Urban Freeways

Accession Number:

01100446

Record Type:

Component

Availability:

Transportation Research Board Business Office

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Abstract:

The purpose of this study is to examine the potential of route diversion for reducing the real-time crash risk along a typical urban freeway. The PARAMICS micro-simulation software package was used to simulate the Interstate-4 corridor in Orlando, Florida. The crash risk along the freeway was determined using models created by Pande and Abdel-Aty (1, 2) that yielded values of both the rear-end and lane-change crash risks using real-time loop detector data. Route diversion was applied at different network loading levels to determine the effects of diverting vehicles at different levels of congestion. The study shows that route diversion is an effective active crash prevention strategy when the freeway is operating in uncongested conditions. In this situation, the crash risk decreases between the locations where vehicles are diverted from and where the diverted vehicles re-enter the freeway. Near the location where vehicles re-enter the freeway, the crash risk is increased due to the additional volume of merging vehicles. This will be referred to as crash risk migration. During heavily congestion situations, the effects of crash risk migration become so excessive that route diversion is not an effective crash prevention solution. In general, diverting more vehicles and diverting vehicles further downstream serves to improve the overall safety benefits experienced. The only downside to diverting more vehicles or diverting them further downstream is the increased overall travel time that is realized; however, the travel time increase encountered in this study was within acceptable limits of about 5% during the uncongested conditions.

Supplemental Notes:

The original title of this paper was Considering Route Diversion as a Real-Time Crash Prevention Strategy on Urban Freeways.

Monograph Accession #:

01084478

Report/Paper Numbers:

08-0019

Language:

English

Corporate Authors:

Transportation Research Board

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Authors:

Abdel-Aty, Mohamed A
Gayah, Vikash

Pagination:

18p

Publication Date:

2008

Conference:

Transportation Research Board 87th Annual Meeting

Location: Washington DC, United States
Date: 2008-1-13 to 2008-1-17
Sponsors: Transportation Research Board

Media Type:

DVD

Features:

Figures (4) ; References (13) ; Tables (3)

Geographic Terms:

Orlando (Florida)

Subject Areas:

Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; Safety and Human Factors; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Source Data:

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2008 Paper #08-0019

Files:

TRIS, TRB

Created Date:

Jan 29 2008 2:25PM