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Title:

Effects of Using High Occupancy Vehicle Lanes on Safety Performance of Freeways

Accession Number:

01628228

Record Type:

Component

Abstract:

The use of High Occupancy Toll Lanes (HOT-Lanes) system has risen dramatically in the recent years. Applying this system helps relieve congestions and generate revenues to meet some of the transportation needs. In 2008, Florida converted its underused High-Occupancy-Vehicle (HOV-lanes) on I-95 to HOT-lanes called 95-Express. Although the HOT-Lanes offer users reliable travel times by managing traffic volume through dynamic tolls especially during peak hours, there is a lack of research that quantifies the traffic safety impact of this system. The main goal of this study is to investigate and provide an up-to-date traffic safety impact of the HOT-Lane system of the whole roadway segment. It is also to investigate for the first time the safety impact of applying this system on each of the HOT-lanes and on the General-Purpose Lanes (GP-Lanes) separately. The results proved that the HOV-to-HOT conversion does not significantly affect the safety performance of the roadway segments as a whole. However, there is an indication that the safety at the HOT-Lanes was significantly improved by reducing all crash categories. On the other hand, all crash categories have increased on the GP-Lanes; this is logical since the crashes remain the same for the whole segment (HOT-Lanes and GP-Lanes) and decreased on the HOT-Lanes, they are expected to increase on the GP-Lanes. Therefore, it can be concluded that the HOT-lanes are safer than the GP-Lanes. Overall, future research is strongly recommended to reach clear conclusions about the safety effectiveness of this system.

Supplemental Notes:

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ANB25 Standing Committee on Highway Safety Performance.

Monograph Accession #:

01618707

Report/Paper Numbers:

17-06894

Language:

English

Corporate Authors:

Transportation Research Board

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Authors:

Abuzwidah, Muamer
Abdel-Aty, Mohamed

Pagination:

19p

Publication Date:

2017

Conference:

Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting

Location: Washington DC, United States
Date: 2017-1-8 to 2017-1-12
Sponsors: Transportation Research Board

Media Type:

Digital/other

Features:

Figures; Maps; Photos; References (15) ; Tables

Geographic Terms:

Florida

Subject Areas:

Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Safety and Human Factors

Source Data:

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2017 Paper #17-06894

Files:

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Created Date:

Dec 8 2016 12:50PM