Evaluation of Different Work Zone Road-Occupation Schemes for Monorail Construction

Abstract

Due to the increasing demand for transportation, road renovation is inevitable, and the emergence of work zones has become the most common problem in traffic control. There are many research results on the impact of work zones on traffic operation, but most of them focus on various capacity theoretical models or traffic flow control strategies and are mostly concentrated in highway work areas and urban road subway construction work areas. The location of these work zones is often unable to be changed and is mostly considered reasonable. At present, there is still a gap in selecting and evaluating the location of the work zone. Therefore, this article studied a bidirectional six-lane intersection in Xi’an and investigated the situation of traffic flow distortion caused by the setting of work zones at the intersection. Two different positions and forms of work zones were designed for evaluation and analysis. Firstly, we used VISSIM (2022 student) to simulate the original and proposed work zone road-occupation schemes and analyzed six indicators. Finally, in order to determine the optimal work zone locations under different traffic situations, we applied the entropy weight method (EWM) to assign weights to multiple indicators, thereby achieving a comprehensive assessment of various schemes. The results showed that the highest improvement level among the six indicators was 50.2%, and different schemes adapted to different traffic situations. However, occupying two lanes of the median opposite the exit lane performed better under high traffic volume. Occupying the median and lanes on both sides of the median is suitable for low traffic volume. Occupying two lanes of the entrance lane and using the opposite lane as the left-turn entrance lane is suitable for situations with high traffic volume in the opposite lane.