Driver's merging gap at midblock U-turn on divided multilane highway

Heavy traffic volumes at signalized at-grade intersections on urban and suburban multilane divided highways may cause the traffic signal control system installed will not function efficiently which in turn will lead to congestions and excessive traffic delays. A favourable approach is to close such...

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Main Author:	Sayed Abdullah, Sh. Nurrul Hazwani
Format:	Thesis
Published:	2012
Subjects:	TA Engineering (General) Civil engineering (General)
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id	my-utm-ep.30737
record_format	uketd_dc
spelling	my-utm-ep.307372020-08-27T07:19:24Z Driver's merging gap at midblock U-turn on divided multilane highway 2012 Sayed Abdullah, Sh. Nurrul Hazwani TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General) Heavy traffic volumes at signalized at-grade intersections on urban and suburban multilane divided highways may cause the traffic signal control system installed will not function efficiently which in turn will lead to congestions and excessive traffic delays. A favourable approach is to close such intersections except for left-turning movements only. This intersection closure is often coupled with provisions on midblock U-turns in the downstream to accommodate the right-turning traffic. A particular concern about a midblock U-turn is that it may result in safety and operational problems. This study is carried out to evaluate the merging gap of U-turning vehicles and to compare the reported gap with the gap values obtained from other researchers. The traffic delay of the U-turning vehicles was also evaluated. The data pertaining to the analysis of gap acceptance and rejection as well as the delay was abstracted from the video playbacks using X-Note Stopwatch application. The driver’s merging gap was analyzed using Greenshield, Raff and Probit methods. The result of the analysis indicates that the critical gap for drivers at a midblock U-turn facility is in the range of 4.0 - 4.5 seconds, which is much lower than the values obtained from studies carried out for American traffic characteristics. However, the traffic delay of U-turning vehicles cannot be concluded in this study due to the weak relationship obtained from the plot of the U-turning delay against nearside traffic volumes. Such a finding suggests the need for thorough study to be carried out to evaluate the current practice of U-turn facility design and assessment methods since traffic operations at such facility is different from those at on-ramp facilities where the design in based on the American Highway Capacity Manual. 2012 Thesis http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/30737/ http://dms.library.utm.my:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/vital:70357?queryType=vitalDismax&query=Driver%27s+merging+gap+at+midblock+U-turn+on+divided+multilane+highway masters Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Faculty of Civil Engineering Faculty of Civil Engineering
institution	Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
collection	UTM Institutional Repository
topic	TA Engineering (General) Civil engineering (General)
spellingShingle	TA Engineering (General) Civil engineering (General) Sayed Abdullah, Sh. Nurrul Hazwani Driver's merging gap at midblock U-turn on divided multilane highway
description	Heavy traffic volumes at signalized at-grade intersections on urban and suburban multilane divided highways may cause the traffic signal control system installed will not function efficiently which in turn will lead to congestions and excessive traffic delays. A favourable approach is to close such intersections except for left-turning movements only. This intersection closure is often coupled with provisions on midblock U-turns in the downstream to accommodate the right-turning traffic. A particular concern about a midblock U-turn is that it may result in safety and operational problems. This study is carried out to evaluate the merging gap of U-turning vehicles and to compare the reported gap with the gap values obtained from other researchers. The traffic delay of the U-turning vehicles was also evaluated. The data pertaining to the analysis of gap acceptance and rejection as well as the delay was abstracted from the video playbacks using X-Note Stopwatch application. The driver’s merging gap was analyzed using Greenshield, Raff and Probit methods. The result of the analysis indicates that the critical gap for drivers at a midblock U-turn facility is in the range of 4.0 - 4.5 seconds, which is much lower than the values obtained from studies carried out for American traffic characteristics. However, the traffic delay of U-turning vehicles cannot be concluded in this study due to the weak relationship obtained from the plot of the U-turning delay against nearside traffic volumes. Such a finding suggests the need for thorough study to be carried out to evaluate the current practice of U-turn facility design and assessment methods since traffic operations at such facility is different from those at on-ramp facilities where the design in based on the American Highway Capacity Manual.
format	Thesis
qualification_level	Master's degree
author	Sayed Abdullah, Sh. Nurrul Hazwani
author_facet	Sayed Abdullah, Sh. Nurrul Hazwani
author_sort	Sayed Abdullah, Sh. Nurrul Hazwani
title	Driver's merging gap at midblock U-turn on divided multilane highway
title_short	Driver's merging gap at midblock U-turn on divided multilane highway
title_full	Driver's merging gap at midblock U-turn on divided multilane highway
title_fullStr	Driver's merging gap at midblock U-turn on divided multilane highway
title_full_unstemmed	Driver's merging gap at midblock U-turn on divided multilane highway
title_sort	driver's merging gap at midblock u-turn on divided multilane highway
granting_institution	Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Faculty of Civil Engineering
granting_department	Faculty of Civil Engineering
publishDate	2012
_version_	1747815736079810560

Driver's merging gap at midblock U-turn on divided multilane highway

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