Speed Management in Rural Communities: Innovative Low Cost Approaches

There are a number of rural communities and small cities in Kansas through which a major highway passes. In such instances, there has been a growing concern about the speed of entering traffic since most highways pass through rural communities on the main street. Typically main streets carry large amount of other road users such as bikers and walkers in addition to local traffic. In some instances, there are also services such as hospitals and fire departments that are located on these types of streets. With limited budgets available in rural communities it is important to identify low cost techniques with promising results to slow down traffic through the rural communities. Use of optical speed bars appears to be one such approach with potential benefits. These optical illusions consist of small pavement markings that will make the user feel as if they are approaching the rural community at a higher rate of speed than acceptable. The small pavement markings will be perpendicular to the existing markings and will be spaced at a large distance initially but will decrease in spacing to give a visual perception of moving at a high rate of speed. Virginia DOT installed optical speed bars recently on a two-lane road in Fairfax County and is currently evaluating the effects. Kansas also tried this approach in a single test section in a work zone but applications in rural communities as a low cost traffic calming measure are not available. Kansas would be a pioneer in the use of optical speed bars if field testing could be conducted in several rural communities.

• Record URL:
  http://rip.trb.org/browse/dproject.asp?n=20994

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $82000.00
• Contract Numbers:

  RE-040-05; HPD-R043

  KSUTC-08-10

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Kansas State University Transportation Center

  Kansas State University
  Department of Civil Engineering
  Manhattan, KS  United States  66506
• Project Managers:

  Stokes, Robert

• Performing Organizations:

  Kansas State University Transportation Center

  Kansas State University
  Department of Civil Engineering
  Manhattan, KS  United States  66506
• Principal Investigators:

  Dissanayake, Sunanda

• Start Date: 20070228
• Expected Completion Date: 0
• Actual Completion Date: 20110630
• Source Data: RiP Project 20994

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Research projects; Road markings; Rural areas; Rural highways; Small cities; Traffic calming; Traffic speed
• Uncontrolled Terms: Speed management
• Geographic Terms: Fairfax County (Virginia); Kansas
• Subject Areas: Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Research;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01462210
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Kansas State University Transportation Center
• Contract Numbers: RE-040-05; HPD-R043, KSUTC-08-10
• Files: RIP
• Created Date: Jan 3 2013 2:00PM