Abstract
The increasing use of road vehicles has caused a number of transport and environmental issues throughout the world. To cope with them, traffic calming schemes are being increasingly implemented in built-up areas. An example of such schemes are Tempo-30 zones. The traffic calming measures applied as part of this scheme must be carefully planned in terms of location and design details in order to obtain the desired reduction in speed, traffic volume and exhaust emissions and, last but foremost, to increase the safety and facilitate the movement of vulnerable road users. The coexistence and combined effect of these measures and their design details must also be taken into account. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the applied traffic calming measures had a considerable bearing on the reduction in speed to the desired level, as assumed in the traffic calming plan. Three street sections starting and ending with different intersection types were chosen to examine the synergy of the applied traffic calming measures. The numbers and speeds of vehicles were measured in three day-long continuous surveys. As it was expected, the amount of speed reduction depended on the hourly traffic volume on a one-way street and various other traffic engineering aspects. The obtained results may be used to modify the existing speed profile models and can guide traffic engineers in choosing the most effective traffic calming measures.
Highlights
The increasing use of road vehicles and the resulting high volumes of traffic bring about ever-increasing transport-related problems in urban areas
One can look for such guidelines in the basic design manuals [1,2,3] and guidelines [4,5] published in the U.S and in the U.K. [6,7,8,9] and German [10] guidelines, which describe the proposed applications of: raised intersections, small raised intersections between one-way streets, small raised intersections coupled with a neighbourhood gateway, gateways, traffic circles and the different traffic calming measures typically applied in Tempo-30 zones, i.e., curb extensions, curb extensions combined with pedestrian crossings or raised pedestrian crossings at corners of intersections, raised mid-block pedestrian crossings and traffic undulations: speed humps and bumps
The speed change ratio was calculated in accordance with the design guidelines [4,5,6,7,8,9,10] since the amount of speed reduction, the primary objective of the Tempo30 zones, depends primarily on the initial speed, before the implementation of a traffic calming measure(s)
Summary
The increasing use of road vehicles and the resulting high volumes of traffic bring about ever-increasing transport-related problems in urban areas. [6,7,8,9] and German [10] guidelines, which describe the proposed applications of: raised intersections, small raised intersections between one-way streets, small raised intersections coupled with a neighbourhood gateway, gateways, traffic circles and the different traffic calming measures typically applied in Tempo-30 zones, i.e., curb extensions (so-called pinchpoints or chokers), curb extensions combined with pedestrian crossings or raised pedestrian crossings at corners of intersections, raised mid-block pedestrian crossings (speed tables) and traffic undulations: speed humps and bumps. The U.S [4,5], U.K. [6,7,8,9] and German [10] guidelines and handbooks [2,3]
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