摘要: |
Traffic congestion is an increasing problem in the nations urban areas, leading to personal inconvenience, increased pollution, hampered economic productivity, and reduced quality of life. While traffic congestion tends to continuously increase, growth in transportation infrastructure is limited by financial and land availability constraints. This has placed an increasing emphasis on using dynamic traffic management strategies, such as speed harmonization and peak-period shoulder use, to efficiently manage congestion using existing freeway capacity. This project implemented various strategies of variable speed limits and shoulder use and assessed their impact on traffic operations and safety of freeway. These strategies were found to homogenize traffic and create safer driving conditions, but did not increase the throughput of the system. The ITS devices required to implement these strategies, enforcement issues, potential impediments in their implementations, and a framework for cost-benefit analysis to determine the economic viability are also discussed. / Title Note: Technical rept. / Supplementary Notes: Prepared in cooperation with Texas A and M Univ.-Kingsville. Sponsored by Texas Dept. of Transportation, Austin. Research and Technology Implementation Office. and Federal Highway Administration, Austin, TX. Texas Div. / Availability Note: Order this product from NTIS by: phone at 1-800-553-NTIS (U.S. customers); (703)605-6000 (other countries); fax at (703)605-6900; and email at orders@ntis.gov. NTIS is located at 5301 Shawnee Road, Alexandria, VA, 22312, USA. / NTIS Prices: PC A07 / NTIS In-house Control Codes: dotour/dotfha;12091,1101 |