Effects of capacity and transit improvements on traffic and transit operations

摘要

Transportation agencies are facing problems of inadequate capacities to meet growing traffic demand. Street widening, signal operations optimization, innovative designs and multimodal transportation modes are traffic management strategies that can improve traffic operations along congested corridors. The goal of this paper is to assess future 2040 traffic and transit conditions along sections of Redwood Road in Salt Lake County, Utah, and develop and test potential operational improvements through VISSIM traffic simulation. Potential improvements, such as street widening, signal optimization, transit exclusive lanes with Transit Signal Priority (TSP) and adding a Continuous Flow Intersection (CFI) are analyzed. The improvements tested showed potential for reducing vehicular travel times between 6% to 20%, and delays 25% to 35%. Transit travel times reduced up to 40%, with delay reductions up to 60%. A combination of different strategies has the potential to improve traffic and transit operations along the busiest sections of Redwood Road.