Abstract
The impact of work zones on traffic is a common problem encountered in traffic management. The reconstruction of roads is inevitable, and it is necessary and urgent to reduce the impact of the work zone on the operation of traffic. There are many existing research results on the influence of highway work zones, including management strategies, traffic flow control strategies, and various corresponding model theories. There are also many research results on the impacts of urban road and subway construction on traffic operation, including construction efficiency, economic impact, and travel matrix. However, there are few studies concerning the choice of work zone location, and most previous studies have assumed that the work zone choice was scientific and reasonable. Therefore, it is reasonable to choose the location of the work zone and to assess whether there is room for improvement in the road form of the work zone, but this remains a research gap. Therefore, we studied a seven-lane main road T-intersection in Xi’an, China, and investigated a work zone located at this intersection that caused a road offset, leading to the non-aligned flow of main traffic. We designed two road improvement schemes and multiple transition schemes, used VISSIM software to evaluate the traffic operation of the two schemes, and used the entropy method to choose the suitability of the two schemes under different conditions. According to the results, in the best case, the driving time, delay, and number of stops are reduced by 44%, 66%, and 92%.
Highlights
Sustainable traffic flows through intersections have long been regarded as the central issue in urban transportation systems
A dynamic control model was used to optimize the signal operations of a new merging system, the lane-based signal merge (LBSM), which uses lane-based signals or variable signs to give drivers in different lanes the right-of-way to proceed through the open lane(s) in a work zone area [32]
A multilayer feed-forward artificial neural network (ANN) model could be used to track drivers and vehicles in work zones; the new model performs better than the traditional deterministic queuing model in estimating the travel delay caused by the work zone [43]
Summary
Sustainable traffic flows through intersections have long been regarded as the central issue in urban transportation systems. Work zones such as subway construction in cities occupying a part of the intersection generate a non-aligned road on the two sides. This kind of work zone remains for a long time, which may be several months or even years, and significantly impacts traffic operation. This paper mainly studies the non-aligned intersection caused by work zones occupying intersections. The best scheme under different volume combinations is selected, which is of great significance for improving the traffic operation status of intersections and reducing the impact of work zones on urban traffic flow. The remainder of this article is organized as follows: Section 2 surveys the literature; Section 3 introduces the problem statement, data collection, and calibration of the simulation model; Section 4 introduces solutions and analyzes the performance of two improved schemes; Section 5 discusses the comparison of the two improved schemes with the entropy method, where a final selection matrix is calculated, and the difference between the two schemes is introduced; and Section 6 concludes the paper
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