The Minnesota Department of Transportation (Mn/DOT) uses ramp meters to manage freeway access on approximately 210 miles of freeways in the Twin Cities metropolitan area. Mn/DOT first tested ramp meters in 1969 as a method to optimize freeway safety and efficiency in the metro area. Since then, approximately 430 ramp meters have been installed and used to help merge traffic onto freeways and to help manage the flow of traffic through bottlenecks. While ramp meters have a long history of use by Mn/DOT as a traffic management strategy, some members of the public have recently questioned the effectiveness of the strategy. A bill passed in the past session by the Minnesota Legislature requires Mn/DOT to study the effectiveness of ramp meters in the Twin Cities Region by conducting a shut-down study before the next legislative session.
Ramp signaling is a relatively low-cost traffic management strategy that aims to improve the flow oftraffic by controlling the rate at which vehicles ...
Ramp signaling is the installation of traffic signals on freeway on-ramps. Studies have shown that in many locations, ramp signaling helped alleviate ...
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United States Department of Transportation
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