Lane restriction system to reduce the environmental cost of urban roads

摘要

Separating trucks from passenger vehicles on urban roads is a task that has attracted attention in many countries because of its capacity to improve traffic performance and optimize traffic resources. A lane-restriction system was designed in this study to improve the performance of urban roads and reduce environmental costs, including total fuel consumption and exhaust emissions. As environmental costs are systemic and must be considered in urban road networks, we first determined the critical factors of lane restriction from the perspectives of urban traffic and the environment. We also designed a dedicated vehicle classification, application scope, and evaluation index system considering the environmental costs of an urban road with a lane-restriction system. Two case studies were conducted to verify the effectiveness. The results suggest that the proposed lane-restriction system significantly improves traffic performance and reduces the environmental costs of the urban road network.