Develop Guidelines for Access Management in Las Vegas

Las Vegas is a rapidly developing area where existing roads may reach their capacity quickly after their open to public. In this case, the roads would have to be widened. A good example for this case may be the Blue Diamond Road. The worry about this road is that the widened road may become congested soon again if the accesses to this road are not well controlled. In that case, there may not be sufficient land available to widen it again. In the City of Las Vegas, it has been observed that land use plays a dominant role on influencing the operations of transportation system. It has been well recognized that traffic operations can be improved if only one or two corners of an intersection is used for commercial development. It can be seen that over the Las Vegas area, gas stations or retail stores are on every corner of a major intersection. It has been going on for years and the chance to see it changing would not be much. One way to reduce the number of accesses is to develop a large commercial division at a corner of an intersection in which a circulation system is provided. With fewer access provided to connect to the outside road network, customers or motorists have no problem accessing to their activity destinations. In the current Las Vegas area, there are not many such circulation systems existing. Conceptually, the spacing between accesses may not need to be too long or too short. If it is too long, traffic would concentrate on one point in space. If it is too short, there would be more conflict points over space. Finding the optimal spacing is actually to find the balancing point. Note that there are two sets of criteria: mobility and safety. It is also worthwhile to investigate the balance points when these two sets of criteria are considered together. Basically, two approaches will be taken to evaluate the spacing for different accesses. One is based on field data, and the other is based on microscopic simulation. In the first approach, field observational data such as travel time and speed data derived from GPS and crash data from RTC will be used to derive the spacing of different accesses. This approach relies upon the statistical models to derive the optimal spacing criteria. In the second approach, microscopic traffic simulation models will be developed. By conducting sensitivity type of analysis, the optimal spacing can also be derived. In addition to the investigation of spacing, the effectiveness of some typical access management strategies such as street corner circulation system and frontage roads will be analyzed using simulation models. Basically, simulation models will be calibrated for several locations (including both corridors and intersections) in the Las Vegas area. The measures of effectiveness for mobility and safety that can be produced in the traffic simulation model can be used in the investigation. The objective of the study is to develop guidelines on access management for the Las Vegas area. Specially, the spacing between accesses including signal intersections, driveways, and opening in medians will be investigated. The benefit of corner clearance, circulations in commercial subdivisions, and frontage roads will also be evaluated. The investigation and evaluation will be conducted based on (1) using statistics model analyzing field data and (2) developing microscopic simulation models. The findings from the study will be used as a foundation for developing guidelines on access management for the Las Vegas area.

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• Supplemental Notes:
  • Final report can be found at http://nutc.unlv.edu/images/am.pdf

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Completed
• Funding: $147410.00
• Contract Numbers:

  DTRT06-G-0034

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Research and Innovative Technology Administration

  University Transportation Centers Program
  1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
  Washington, DC  United States  20590

  Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada

  600 S Grand Central Pkwy
  Suite 350
  Las Vegas, NV  United States  89106
• Project Managers:

  Kaseko, Mohamed

• Performing Organizations:

  Transportation Research Center

  University of Nevada, Las Vegas
  4505 Maryland Parkway, MS 4007
  Las Vegas, NV  United States  89154
• Principal Investigators:

  Xu, Xuecai

  Mauga, Timur

  Tian, Zong

  Teng, Hualiang (Harry)

  Kaseko, Mohamed

• Start Date: 20070901
• Expected Completion Date: 0
• Actual Completion Date: 20080831
• Source Data: RiP Project 18611

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Access control (Transportation); Driveways; Guidelines; Intersections; Land use; Land use planning; Research projects; Traffic signals; Urban areas
• Uncontrolled Terms: Spacing (Engineering)
• Geographic Terms: Las Vegas (Nevada)
• Subject Areas: Economics; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01468417
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Transportation Research Center
• Contract Numbers: DTRT06-G-0034
• Files: UTC, RIP, USDOT
• Created Date: Jan 3 2013 3:50PM