01514848

Component

Highway preservation projects are commonly conducted at night and often require working in close proximity to ongoing traffic. Vehicle speed and speed variability in work zones is inextricably connected to the work zone design and the selected traffic control devices. To provide guidance on how to effectively and efficiently reduce traffic speeds, the Oregon Department of Transportation conducted a research study to investigate the impact of selected traffic control devices on vehicle speed within highway paving project work zones. The research centered around two case studies on two-lane paving projects in Oregon. On each case study, the researchers implemented multiple traffic control devices and evaluated their impact on vehicle speed. The conclusions drawn from the two case studies are different, but they all suggest that a police officer parked on the site was found to effectively reduce traffic speeds and should be used if available and feasible. The research findings also suggest using a combination of temporary reduced speed limit signs, radar speed monitoring display, and Portable Changeable Message Sign (PCMS) on both trailers and rollers will be helpful and should be easy to implement on different projects. Further research is needed to validate the research findings and better identify the advantages of one traffic control device over another.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AHB55 Work Zone Traffic Control.

01503729

14-2454

English

15p

2014

Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Maps; Photos; References; Tables

Case studies; Night; Paving; Police patrol; Speed limits; Traffic control devices; Traffic speed; Work zone traffic control

Oregon Department of Transportation

Oregon

Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; I73: Traffic Control

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2014 Paper #14-2454

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Jan 27 2014 2:51PM