Design of Lane Merges at Rural Freeway Construction Work Zones, Tech Summary.

摘要

The goals of the research were to develop and test alternative strategies of traffic control that could enhance the safety and efficiency of merging operations within lane-drop merge areas. To accomplish the research goals, a series of work objectives were established, including: (1) An identification and documentation of the state-of-the-art and state-of-the-practice activities in the geometric design and traffic control at the entrance to construction work zones on rural freeways; (2) Development of a merging strategy to facilitate a more efficient merge than conventional designs; (3) Identification of sites on rural freeways in Louisiana to test and compare the conventional and experimental merge configuration; (4) Generation of alternative traffic control schemes for the selected experimental merge design, and apply them to the appointed work zone test site; (5) Recording of lane-specific speed and volume data from the work zone site; and (6) An evaluation and analysis of the traffic data gathered for the experimental and conventional configuration.