Optimal off-ramp terminal locating strategy based on traffic safety and efficiency

ABSTRACT

Off-ramps are key nodes which connect urban elevated highways and auxiliary roads, and the distance between an off-ramp terminal and an intersection (ORTI-D) relates directly to traffic safety and efficiency. The authors introduced a new off-ramp terminal locating strategy considering traffic safety and efficiency synthetically. After building a basic VISSIM simulation model which included two-lane off-ramp, one-lane auxiliary road before the weaving area and four-lane entrance road before a no-signal intersection, the functional relationships of the LWA (Length of Weaving areas)-TIT (Time integrated time-to-collision) and the LWA-TTD (Total traffic delay) were developed. On this basis, the genetic algorithm was used to obtain the traffic safety-efficiency optimal ORTI-D and a positive correlation between the weaving proportion and the optimal ORTI-D was found. The methods developed in this paper can satisfy the requirements of off-ramps engineering design and contribute to solve traffic safety and efficiency problems in traffic management.

KEYWORDS:

• Traffic safety and efficiency
• off-ramp terminal locating strategy
• VISSIM

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51778141 and 52072069), Jiangsu Creative PHD student sponsored project (KYCX20_0138) and Henan science and technology project (Grant No.182102310733). Their assistance is gratefully acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [51778141]; National Natural Science Foundation of China [52072069]; Jiangsu Creative PHD student sponsored project [KYCX20_0138]; Henan science and technology project [182102310733].