摘要: |
HOV facilities have been and will continue to be an integral part of the California freeway systems. Therefore, it is necessary to ensure that these HOV facilities are meeting their purposes of improving mobility, trip time reliability, and air quality. Over the last several years, there has been strong interest in comparing the performance between limited access and continuous access HOV facilities in California. The goal of this research was to develop novel methodologies for assessing operational performance of existing HOV facilities (with a focus on those in Caltrans District 8), and apply them to comparatively determine pros and cons of the two HOV lane access types. To meet this goal, five research methodologies were developed and applied: 1) corridor-level analysis, 2) statistical modeling, 3) video data analysis, 4) simulation study, and 5) before-and-after study. The collective findings from these methodologies suggest that freeway with limited access HOV facility would accommodate higher maximum throughput while freeway with continuous access HOV facility would provide higher average travel speed under mild congestion. Based on these findings, a new design of HOV lane access type that combines the advantages of the existing ones was recommended for consideration and evaluation. |