Shared lane design has been used to relieve the hindrance of left-turn movement. The primary object of the study is to identify the benefit zone where shared lane design overwhelms conventional protected control strategies at signalized intersections. Analytical models were proposed to calculate the minimum green time duration required to fully discharge all the approaching vehicles, which is used as an indicator of the effectiveness of different strategies. Based on the proposed model, the benefit zone of the shared lane design was identified. With the benefit zone plot, engineers can decide whether to deploy shared lane design according to the traffic demand. A realistic method was also provided to increase the accuracy of the proposed models. The results showed that the shared lane design is suitable to intersections where traffic demand from opposing approaches is significantly unbalanced. The proposed framework is expected to be helpful for traffic engineers to improve the performance of signalized intersections effectively and efficiently without complex computing.
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