Small rural communities located along major state or county roadways typically find most of the traffic along their main thoroughfares is pass-through rather than local traffic. Unfortunately, drivers passing through ...Small rural communities located along major state or county roadways typically find most of the traffic along their main thoroughfares is pass-through rather than local traffic. Unfortunately, drivers passing through these communities often enter at high rates of speeds, which are often significantly higher than the speed limit of the local segment. Speed management in rural areas requires different considerations compared to urban areas and, within the US, rural speed management is not as advanced with little experience or guidance for agencies to draw on. This paper summarizes the results of a study that evaluated, in part, several different types of transverse pavement markings within the speed transition zones in small rural communities. Three different countermeasures were evaluated: converging chevrons, transverse lane markings, and optical speed bars.展开更多
Speed management is an essential tool in ensuring the improved safety of users of urban roads, particularly vulnerable users. It relies on several measures： awareness campaigns, speed control, as well as the developm...Speed management is an essential tool in ensuring the improved safety of users of urban roads, particularly vulnerable users. It relies on several measures： awareness campaigns, speed control, as well as the development and operation of the road infrastructure. Municipalities in Quebec are increasingly resorting to the development of traffic calming measures, and are facing numerous questions concerning their installation and their effectiveness. To respond to this need, the ministere des Transports du Quebec （Quebec Department of Transport） has begun publishing a series of fact sheets on a variety of traffic calming measures, including speed humps and speed cushions, raised crosswalks and intersections, neckdowns, centre islands and chicanes. A general fact sheet introduces all of the measures and notably outlines the procedure for pre-implementation analysis. Each fact sheet dedicated to an individual measure outlines the implementation context, advantages and disadvantages, geometric characteristics, effectiveness at reducing speed, and maintenance requirements, including winter maintenance. Two fact sheets are already published： the general fact sheet and the fact sheet on speed humps and speed cushions. The fact sheets as well as examples of measures implemented in municipalities are available on the minist6re＇s web site under Partenaires-Municipalites-Securite routiere.展开更多
Intelligent speed adaptation （ISA） is considered as an effective measure to reduce number of traffic accidents in the field of intelligent transportation systems （ITS）. On the other hand, its effects for traffic s...Intelligent speed adaptation （ISA） is considered as an effective measure to reduce number of traffic accidents in the field of intelligent transportation systems （ITS）. On the other hand, its effects for traffic safety are still doubted by many people. To make the possibility analysis, an experiment is conducted by using driving simulator. Regarding ISA ap- proaches, there are three modes： mandatory, voluntary and advisory. Among them, the advisory type seems to be the easiest one to introduce. Therefore, we focus on the advisory mode in this study by considering ISA just at the beginning stage in Japan. The experiment consists of four steps： without ISA, ISA using pictures, ISA using voices and again without ISA. The outputs obtained from the driving simulator are analyzed combined with the consciousness of the participants. The experiment shows that the ISA can improve recognition of speed limitation especially for people who have random rambling or looking aside tendency. Furthermore, the ISA especially when using voices can contribute in changing the consciousness of people who are aggressive in driving. Their driving speeds can reduce so that positive effects on traffic safety can be concluded.展开更多
Over the past few decades, urban freeway congestion has been highly recognized as a serious and worsening traffic problem in the world. To relieve freeway congestion, several active traffic and demand management （ATD...Over the past few decades, urban freeway congestion has been highly recognized as a serious and worsening traffic problem in the world. To relieve freeway congestion, several active traffic and demand management （ATDM） methods have been developed. Among them, variable speed limit （VSL） aims at regulating freeway mainline flow upstream to meet existing capacity and to harmonize vehicle speed. However, congestion may still be inevitable even with VSL implemented due to extremely high demand in actual practice. This study modified an existing VSL strategy by adding a new local constraint to suggest an achievable speed limit during the control period. As a queue is a product of the congestion phenomenon in freeway, the incentives of a queue build-up in the applied coordinated VSL control situation were analyzed. Considering a congestion occurrence （a queue build-up） characterized by a sudden and sharp speed drop, speed contours were utilized to demonstrate the congestion distribution over a whole freeway network in various sce- narios. Finally, congestion distributions found in both VSL control and non-VS control situations for various scenarios were investigated to explore the impact of the applied coordinated VSL control on the congestion distribution. An authentic stretch of V^hitemud Drive （I~~ID）, an urban freeway corridor in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, was employed to implement this modified coordinated VSL control strategy; and a calibrated micro-simu- lation VISSIM model （model functions） was applied as the substitute of the real-world traffic system to test the above mentioned performance. The exploration task in this study can lay the groundwork for future research on how to improve the presented VSL control strategy for achieving the congestion mitigation effect on freeway.展开更多
文摘Small rural communities located along major state or county roadways typically find most of the traffic along their main thoroughfares is pass-through rather than local traffic. Unfortunately, drivers passing through these communities often enter at high rates of speeds, which are often significantly higher than the speed limit of the local segment. Speed management in rural areas requires different considerations compared to urban areas and, within the US, rural speed management is not as advanced with little experience or guidance for agencies to draw on. This paper summarizes the results of a study that evaluated, in part, several different types of transverse pavement markings within the speed transition zones in small rural communities. Three different countermeasures were evaluated: converging chevrons, transverse lane markings, and optical speed bars.
文摘Speed management is an essential tool in ensuring the improved safety of users of urban roads, particularly vulnerable users. It relies on several measures： awareness campaigns, speed control, as well as the development and operation of the road infrastructure. Municipalities in Quebec are increasingly resorting to the development of traffic calming measures, and are facing numerous questions concerning their installation and their effectiveness. To respond to this need, the ministere des Transports du Quebec （Quebec Department of Transport） has begun publishing a series of fact sheets on a variety of traffic calming measures, including speed humps and speed cushions, raised crosswalks and intersections, neckdowns, centre islands and chicanes. A general fact sheet introduces all of the measures and notably outlines the procedure for pre-implementation analysis. Each fact sheet dedicated to an individual measure outlines the implementation context, advantages and disadvantages, geometric characteristics, effectiveness at reducing speed, and maintenance requirements, including winter maintenance. Two fact sheets are already published： the general fact sheet and the fact sheet on speed humps and speed cushions. The fact sheets as well as examples of measures implemented in municipalities are available on the minist6re＇s web site under Partenaires-Municipalites-Securite routiere.
文摘Intelligent speed adaptation （ISA） is considered as an effective measure to reduce number of traffic accidents in the field of intelligent transportation systems （ITS）. On the other hand, its effects for traffic safety are still doubted by many people. To make the possibility analysis, an experiment is conducted by using driving simulator. Regarding ISA ap- proaches, there are three modes： mandatory, voluntary and advisory. Among them, the advisory type seems to be the easiest one to introduce. Therefore, we focus on the advisory mode in this study by considering ISA just at the beginning stage in Japan. The experiment consists of four steps： without ISA, ISA using pictures, ISA using voices and again without ISA. The outputs obtained from the driving simulator are analyzed combined with the consciousness of the participants. The experiment shows that the ISA can improve recognition of speed limitation especially for people who have random rambling or looking aside tendency. Furthermore, the ISA especially when using voices can contribute in changing the consciousness of people who are aggressive in driving. Their driving speeds can reduce so that positive effects on traffic safety can be concluded.
基金supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council(NSERC) of Canada, City of Edmonton,and Transport Canadasupported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.51208052,51308058)the Science and Technology Research and Development Program of Shaanxi Province,China(No.2013K13-04-02)
文摘Over the past few decades, urban freeway congestion has been highly recognized as a serious and worsening traffic problem in the world. To relieve freeway congestion, several active traffic and demand management （ATDM） methods have been developed. Among them, variable speed limit （VSL） aims at regulating freeway mainline flow upstream to meet existing capacity and to harmonize vehicle speed. However, congestion may still be inevitable even with VSL implemented due to extremely high demand in actual practice. This study modified an existing VSL strategy by adding a new local constraint to suggest an achievable speed limit during the control period. As a queue is a product of the congestion phenomenon in freeway, the incentives of a queue build-up in the applied coordinated VSL control situation were analyzed. Considering a congestion occurrence （a queue build-up） characterized by a sudden and sharp speed drop, speed contours were utilized to demonstrate the congestion distribution over a whole freeway network in various sce- narios. Finally, congestion distributions found in both VSL control and non-VS control situations for various scenarios were investigated to explore the impact of the applied coordinated VSL control on the congestion distribution. An authentic stretch of V^hitemud Drive （I~~ID）, an urban freeway corridor in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, was employed to implement this modified coordinated VSL control strategy; and a calibrated micro-simu- lation VISSIM model （model functions） was applied as the substitute of the real-world traffic system to test the above mentioned performance. The exploration task in this study can lay the groundwork for future research on how to improve the presented VSL control strategy for achieving the congestion mitigation effect on freeway.
