First Advisor

Christopher Monsere

Date of Award

2015

Document Type

Project

Degree Name

Master of Science (M.S.) in Civil & Environmental Engineering

Department

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Language

English

Subjects

Traffic circles -- Design, Traffic flow -- Computer simulation, Travel time (Traffic engineering), Cycling -- Safety measures, Traffic safety

DOI

10.15760/CEEMP.24

Abstract

The focus of this project is to see how a turbo roundabout and a protected intersection designs behave when they are applied on two study sites in Portland, OR. PTV VISSM is used to model, analyze and compare the performances of these designs with the existing intersection. In addition, the best features of the protected intersection and the turbo roundabout were combined to create a new intersection design that is safer for the bicyclists and also performs better than the existing intersection.

The analysis is conducted for five different volume scenarios for both the study sites. The results of the analysis show that both the proposed designs perform better than the existing intersection at both study sites. In addition, study site-II, which is the intersection of SE 92nd Ave & SE Flavel St, was examined for the combination of a protected intersection with a turbo roundabout at the intersection. Both the safety features and the performance of the intersection were improved significantly with the treatment.

The results in this project shows promise at reducing traffic crashes and increasing performance at intersections. At NW 23 Ave & NW Vaughn St Intersection, the existing signalized intersection was transformed into a turbo roundabout, this resulted in the average delay being reduced by 85.43%, the average speed increased by 52.5%, and the total travel time being reduced by 31.68%. At SE 92nd Ave & SE Flavel St, the existing signalized intersection was transformed into a protected intersection design, which resulted in the average delay being reduced by 10.11%, the average speed increased by 3.09%, and the total travel time being increased by 10.05%. Again on SE 92nd Ave & SE Flavel St Intersection, the existing design was transformed into a turbo roundabout, which is incorporated with a protected intersection: the average delay was reduced by 32.69%; the average speed increased by 24.72%; and the total travel time was reduced by 26.02%. However, these are just simulation results assuming all road users will follow the road rules, which in the real world is not always true. Therefore, further studies using different simulation software, performance parameters and even by implementing them on different representative sites should be done in the future.

Rights

©2015

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

Comments

A research project report submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/15457

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