Coordinated pre-preemption of traffic signals to enhance railroad grade crossing safety in urban areas and estimation of train impacts to arterial travel time delay.

Details

• Creators:
  Lin, Pei-Sung ; Wang, Zhenyu ; Wang, Qing ; Guo, Rui ; Sunkari, Srinivasa ; Songchitruksa, Praprut ; Chen, Xunawu ; Xiao, Yan ; Hadi, Mohammed
• Corporate Creators:
  University of South Florida. Center for Urban Transportation Research ; Texas A&M Transportation Institute ; Lehman Center for Transportation Research
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  • Traffic signal preemption
  • Railroad grade crossings
  • Urban areas
  • Highway safety
  • Arterial highways
  • Simulation
  • Algorithms
  • Before and after studies
  • At grade intersections
  • Travel time
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• Publication/ Report Number:
  BDK85 977-44
• Resource Type:
  Tech Report
• Geographical Coverage:
  Florida
• Corporate Publisher:
  Florida Department of Transportation
• Abstract:
  This research project investigated the potential for using advanced features of traffic signal system software platforms ; (ATMS.now), prevalent in Florida, to alleviate safety and mobility problems at highway-railroad at-grade crossings and ; adjacent arterials. Pre-preemption phasing was developed in this study to provide “extra” green time to the movements ; blocked by a train before the train’s arrival at the crossing in order to (1) mitigate congestion on the arterials near ; railways and (2) reduce the conflicts of train-vehicle and/or vehicle-vehicle adjacent to at-grade crossings. This study ; explored the technologies for implementing key functions of a pre-preemption system, including train detection, train ; arrival prediction, and pre-preemption control algorithms, and the capabilities of ATMS.now system. VISSIM-based ; simulation models were developed in this study based on three control sections along two railway corridors (FEC and ; CSX) in Broward County, Florida, to test the proposed pre-preemption strategies. A series of comparisons before-after ; implementing pre-preemption strategies was conducted to validate the effectiveness of pre-preemption strategies. The ; major findings and recommendations for implementation from this study are provided below. ;  Upstream preemption signals (activation or release) are suggested for triggering pre-preemptions at downstream ; intersections along the railroad corridor. The Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) is predicted based on the logs of two ; or more preemptions at upstream crossings with ideal space less than 0.5 miles. ;  The coordinated pre-preemption strategy developed in this study aims to clear the through traffic at several ; intersections along an arterial as much as possible before train’s arrival. All pre-preemption phases are pre-timed; ; coordinated pre-preemption is easy to be implemented on existing traffic controllers. ;  Based on the simulation results, the coordinated pre-preemption strategy can effectively reduce average delay, ; average stops, and average queue length of the arterials near a railroad crossing. The performance pattern is ; sensitive to site features and strategy configurations. Considering its applicability and corridor-level effectiveness, ; coordinated pre-preemption is suggested when through traffic volume is higher than 500 vehicles per hour per lane ; (vphpl) and train block duration is longer than 100 seconds. ;  A generic pre-preemption plan was developed in this study to provide guidance on implementation of the prepreemption strategy using the ATMS.now system in Florida.
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• Format:
  PDF
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/26860/dot_26860_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 4.99 MB]
• Collection(s):
  US Transportation Collection
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:3c87e2de0a22b65f382ded96152521c1ba85065aabf60f2a97d48ef06cb69e311c713cce1a6f629d3f222343366bb7b14f598c771be7d7c5df62ad9414582aa6