The potential of signalized offset T-intersections to accommodate new developments

Abstract

An offset T-intersection splits a conventional four leg intersection into two three-leg T-intersections to reduce the number of conflicts. While the safety benefits of offset T-intersections have been widely documented, the effects on operations are not well understood. To fix that, this paper employed microsimulation modeling to investigate the differences in operational performance between offset T-intersections and four-leg standard intersections under various traffic demands, intersection spacings, and signal timing schemes for three development types: superstore, hybrid gas station, and residential area. Queue length and delay were employed as measurements of effectiveness. Based on microsimulation modeling, we found that under most of the tested scenarios, offset T-intersections were superior to four-leg intersections in terms of reducing delay for the main street traffic. In addition, we found that the left–right (L-R) offset T-intersection configuration outperformed the right-left (R-L) offset configuration in terms of preventing main-street left turn queue spillback. Based on the simulation results, the paper provided practice-ready guidelines on selecting an optimum intersection configuration for each specific development type given the volume demands and known geometric constraints for a given site.