Continuous Flow Metering Alternative Solution to Alleviate Congestion on Interstate 70 Eisenhower Johnson Memorial Tunnel

摘要

Metering aims to improve traffic flow on the main lanes of a freeway by regulating therninflow to these lanes. While metering is most often implemented at on-ramps to a freeway,rnit can also be used to regulate the flow of traffic on the main lanes themselves. Althoughrncounterintuitive that regulating flow on the main lanes can also improve overall traffic flow, thisrncan happen in cases where downstream bottlenecks exist. Alternatively, upstream metering mayrnsimply be required to prevent excessive queuing at a downstream bottleneck. This paperrnevaluates two metering techniques applied to the eastbound main lanes of Interstate 70 at thernEisenhower–Johnson Memorial Tunnel (EJMT) to potentially improve traffic flow, shorten thernqueues both east and west of the EJMT, and reduce the need to completely stop traffic at thernEJMT. One strategy evaluated is traditional, or manual, metering in which operations staff stoprnand start traffic as seen necessary to reduce a downstream queue. The other strategy is calledrncontinuous flow metering (CFM), which automatically displays red and green lights at a givenrncycle length to smooth out the traffic stream as well as reduce downstream queuing. The studyrnresults show that CFM did reduce travel times and save person hours of travel in several trialrntime periods.