01506567

Component

https://doi.org/10.3141/2459-11

Crossing elimination is a relatively recent strategy that emergency managers and departments of transportation may consider during no-notice evacuations. In this strategy, certain intersection movements that may be permissible under normal operating conditions are prohibited so that arterial traffic flow will increase. A few previous studies examined this strategy with contraflow operations. However, the benefits of crossing elimination alone remain unclear. An assessment of the effects of intersection crossing elimination during evacuations helps fill this knowledge gap. A simulation–optimization model was developed to determine the near-optimal configuration of intersection movements from a set of prespecified possible configurations for intersections in a given area. At the optimization level, the total travel time of evacuees was minimized, and at the lower level, all traffic was assigned to the network with DYNUST traffic assignment simulation software. A simulated annealing heuristic was used to solve the optimization problem. The entire method was applied to a real network to assess the impact of crossing elimination. Three scenarios were developed with combinations of evacuee destination and departure time distributions. Results for these scenarios indicated that total evacuee travel time was improved by about 3% to 5% (9,700 to 11,200 h for about 300,000 evacuees). The availability of through movements and the elimination of merging points were the two factors influencing the selection of modified configurations for intersection movement.

01551909

14-1455

English

pp 91–100

2014

Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board

9780309295512

Print

Figures (4) ; Maps; References (39) ; Tables (4)

Area traffic signal control; Emergency management; Evacuation; Intersections; Simulated annealing; Travel time; Uninterrupted flow

Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Security and Emergencies; I73: Traffic Control

PRP, TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Jan 27 2014 2:33PM

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