A Study of Traffic Engineering Design and Assessment for ETC Lanes ased on Traffic Safety Analysis at Toll Plazas
Date Issued
2009
Date
2009
Author(s)
Chuang, Pi-Chang
Abstract
Due to the introduction of the electronic toll collection (ETC) system in toll plaza, the highway toll collection system in Taiwan has entered into a new era. However, the progress and diversification of ETC system have resulted in potential danger and issues to traffic engineering and traffic safety. When a vehicle comes close to, passes by, or leaves a toll plaza, it would face a number of decision points, causing further merging, weaving, queuing, and diverging of traffic and differential speeds; hence, risks of sideswipe collision, rear-end collision, and other accidents increase. According to statistical results, the ETC system has indeed increased the opportunity and risk of accidents. Under certain conditions, the ETC vehicles have higher chances of being involved in accidents than other vehicles. If other factors exist, such as speeding, drunk driving, buckling-up, and other violations, the severity of accidents in ETC lanes could even aggravated. It is shown that professional consideration is inadequate in designing the position, color, type, quantity, and expression methods of signs, pavement markings, channelization, or crash cushion facilities of the ETC lanes. This study aims to develop safety models to explore traffic safety risks at toll plazas. Analysis results have shown that ETC systems increase the chance of having an accident at the toll plaza. In terms of toll plaza design, signing, marking, and channelization considerations, various traffic engineering improvements are proposed as follows:（1）improvement in lane markings of the approach zone, （2）traffic signs provided to alert drivers not to stop in ETC lanes under any circumstances, （3）enough width of ETC lane to accommodate a high percentage of heavy trucks, and（4）enough length of approach zone to ETC lanes. The results of this study can be considered as a basis for revision of the regulation of traffic control devices. To assess the improvement effect of traffic engineering effectively, this study also develop an framework for assessment of traffic improvement effectiveness from the perspective of safety and efficiency based on empirical analysis results and the Value Engineering Method. Considering balance of a reasonable cost and good performance to help of implementing improvement alternative with consideration of reasonable cost and performance.
Subjects
ETC
Traffic Safety Analysis
Traffic Engineering
AHP
Toll Plaza
Type
thesis
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