Investigating operation at geometrically unconventional intersections.

Details

• Creators:
  Sharma, Anuj ; Gwayali, Sunil ; Rilett, Laurence
• Corporate Creators:
  Nebraska Transportation Center
• Corporate Contributors:
  United States. Federal Highway Administration ; United States. Department of Transportation. Federal Transit Administration
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  • Intersections
  • Highway curves
  • Highway operations
  • Economic analysis
  • Life cycle costing
  • Benefit cost analysis
  • Decision support systems
  • Rural highways
  • U turns
• Publication/ Report Number:
  SPR-P1(1) M328;26-1121-3006-001
• Resource Type:
  Tech Report
• Geographical Coverage:
  United States
• Corporate Publisher:
  Nebraska. Dept. of Roads
• Abstract:
  This report documents the development of decision assistance curves (DAC) for unconventional intersections, particularly ; median U-turns (MUT), continuous flow intersections (CFI), and jughandles. The operational measure of effectiveness ; such as delay, fuel consumption, and emissions were computed. An economic analysis was performed to compute the net ; present value (NPV) of benefits of operation and benefit to cost ratio (B/C) by estimating user’s cost, non-user’s cost, ; construction cost, and operation and maintenance cost for the life cycle period. The DAC classified the region of optimal ; performance of rural unconventional intersections comprising of four-lane major streets and two-lane minor streets. DAC ; indicated that MUT is applicable for almost all levels of volume combinations of major and minor street approach volumes ; under the presence of low left turning traffic. For medium to high left turning traffic, jughandle and CFI performed ; optimally on high major street approach volumes. Furthermore, it was also observed that for a case with medium to high ; left turning volumes, the use of CFI would be optimal for high major street approach volumes and high minor street ; approach volumes at an unbalanced condition. The use of a jughandle would be optimal for high major street approach ; volumes and its performance got better with increasing minor street approach volume at a balanced condition. However, ; the jughandle performed better at high major street approach volume and low minor street approach volume at an ; unbalanced condition. The study developed a spreadsheet tool called SILCC to estimate the operational measure of ; effectiveness, as well as to perform a life cycle cost analysis. A sample case study performed on a 24-hour rural pattern ; volume indicated high NPV of operational benefits and high B/C related to MUT compared to all other intersections for ; new construction. Though the MUT-retrofit had the highest NPV, since the construction cost of MUT-retrofit is high, a ; jughandle-retrofit was found to have the highest B/C.
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• Format:
  PDF
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/27877/dot_27877_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 8.31 MB]
• Collection(s):
  US Transportation Collection
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:fec749a015444d45d48dad659a9368f57fc703f4501cea52f8b75b2f214a1c484865c0b917f09558390e7d0c883d2882cbb0001b2d3bbb8a633dd424a75c7a60