Development of Guidance for Scheduling of Freeway Work Zones to Minimize Congestion Impacts (Project P2)

Work zones are commonplace on highways as agencies work to maintain and preserve the existing highway system as well as expand to increase its capacity. These work zones can cause delay for travelers as well as create opportunities for additional crashes to occur. These mobility and safety penalties are most acute on rural freeways due to the volume of traffic and high speeds of free-flowing traffic. Knowledge of the potential for occurrence, or probability of queue formation, which happens when volume exceeds capacity at the lane closure site, can help transportation agencies improve their work zone scheduling practices. This research will build on a current STRIDE study, which uses traffic simulation modeling to estimate the probability of queuing for a limited set of work zone traffic and geometric conditions. In that study, recognition that research has called for capacity to be represented stochastically rather than deterministically, has led to an approach that estimates the chance of queue formation for a given set of conditions. By expanding the range of lane closure scenarios and traffic conditions beyond that in the current study, a more complete set of conditions can be included in a decision support tool for transportation agencies. The research proposed herein broadens the range of conditions adequately to support development of a decision support tool that will allow agencies to decide, based on a selected risk of queue formation and resulting delay under which traffic conditions (volumes and truck percentages) to allow a lane closure to occur.

• Record URL:
  https://stride.ce.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/P2-Abstract.pdf
• 

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $118578
• Contract Numbers:

  69A3551747104

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Managing Organizations:

  Southeastern Transportation Research, Innovation, Development and Education Center (STRIDE)

  University of Florida
  365 Weil Hall
  Gainesville, FL  United States  32611
• Project Managers:

  Tucker-Thomas, Dawn

• Performing Organizations:

  Auburn University

  Department of Civil Engineering
  238 Harbert Engineering Center
  Auburn, AL  United States  36849

  University of Alabama, Birmingham

  Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering
  1075 13th Street South
  Birmingham, AL  United States  35294
• Principal Investigators:

  Turochy, Rod

• Start Date: 20181001
• Expected Completion Date: 20220630
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers Program

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Decision support systems; Freeways; Lane closure; Queuing; Stochastic processes; Traffic congestion; Traffic simulation; Work zone traffic control; Work zones
• Subject Areas: Highways; Maintenance and Preservation; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01680748
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Southeastern Transportation Research, Innovation, Development and Education Center (STRIDE)
• Contract Numbers: 69A3551747104
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Sep 17 2018 7:32PM