01099208

Component

Placement of guide signs on highway is an important task to field traffic engineers. It relates to many factors, such as traffic conditions, highway geometry and driver behavior, etc., and may vary from region to region. It is crucial to effectively determine the guide sign placement so that drivers on highway can take the desired exit timely and avoid any abrupt maneuvers. This paper presents models of utilizing lane change distance to derive the sign placement. The models are estimated using detailed vehicle trajectory data at a high resolution collected in naturalistic driving environment. The entire lane change process is divided into several sub-maneuvers (from one lane to an adjacent lane), while models for each sub-maneuver are presented separately. Instead of statically determining the sign placement, the proposed methodology takes various factors into consideration, including traffic flow characters, highway geometries, and vehicle interactions. Based on reasonable assumptions on driver’s vision, advance distance of guide sign placement under prevailing traffic conditions is thereby estimated. The methodology provided in this paper can work as a supplemental reference to MUTCD for placing guide signs more efficiently.

01084478

08-1940

English

19p

2008

Transportation Research Board 87th Annual Meeting

DVD

Figures (5) ; References (16) ; Tables (6)

Guideposts; Highway traffic control; Lane changing; Location; Operations; Traffic characteristics; Traffic flow; Traffic signs

Administration and Management; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; Safety and Human Factors; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning; I83: Accidents and the Human Factor

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2008 Paper #08-1940

TRIS, TRB

Jan 29 2008 4:17PM