“I want my street to be like an extension to my driveway, where the kids can play safely and where the traffic does not bother us,” said one resident. Another said that she “likes traffic... We live in a city.” This gives an idea of the broad range of opinions and views that exist on traffic. Traffic in local streets in a concern for residential amenity. There is always conflict between the residential amenity and traffic access functions of local streets. There is much debate on what a true local road is. The concept of environmental capacity was developed to identify a suitable maximum traffic volume on local streets, without overly adversely affecting residents. It was first introduced by Buchanan and Appleyard in separate research in the 1960s. Both men settled on thresholds of 2,000-3,000 vehicles per day. Chesterman, in 2009, carried out a study in Christchurch, surveying residents on four local streets with varying traffic volumes. He found residents living on busier streets felt that their streets were busier, noisier and less safe. There was also an increasing trend for these residents to have their houses turned away from the street and they tended to have less personal involvement with their neighbours. He found that perhaps a more suitable environmental capacity estimate was between 1,500 and 2,000 vehicles per day. This study looked at further Christchurch streets, this time with street treatments, such as street calming and tree plantings, aiming to find an environmental capacity for these streets as well as seeing whether the street treatments affected the perceived environmental capacity. As well as reinforcing most of the conclusions found by Chesterman, a higher environmental capacity of around 2,000 vehicles per day was found for the surveyed streets. This suggests that indeed, street treatments such as those used in the surveyed streets can increase the environmental capacity, which has implications for local councils who want to maintain road traffic carrying capabilities without having unsatisfied residents.

No description available.

State Highway Agencies (SHAs) are being forced to focus more on rehabilitation, resurfacing, and reconstruction of existing roadways rather than the construction of new facilities. These activities can create several challenges when they must be conducted on roadways with high traffic volumes. This research identified numerous strategies that can be implemented by SHAs that have the potential to influence the overall success of roadway projects with high traffic volumes. This research also created a framework for when to implement these different strategies. These strategies were identified through an in-depth literature review and through case studies conducted on highway projects that were under construction. Through the case studies the different strategies were documented within the context that warranted their use. Information from the case studies was collected and documented through interviews and site visits. The strategies identified through this research were used to create four matrices that summarize the research findings. A general matrix was created to show the motivating project conditions that warrant the use of each strategy. A public relations matrix was created to display the influence the impacted road user groups have on public relations and information strategies. A traffic management matrix was created to show different types of traffic management strategies and the potential impact they will have on the project. Finally, an interdependency matrix was created to show groups of strategies that are related to each other or require the use of other strategies to be able to influence the success of the project. These matrices could be further developed to create a set of guidelines that could be used by a SHA during the planning phases of a roadway project.

No description available.

The growth of serious injuries and fatalities resulting from traffic accidents at intersections is one of the main problems in urban areas. Signal control was proposed as an alternative intersection design on rural roads. There were many reasons behind this, the most outstanding of which was the traffic signals can be used as a cost effective tools for traffic management in urban areas. The LHOVRA technique was intended to improve safety and reduce lost time at signalized intersection along high speed roads. The LHOVRA technique is an isolated traffic control strategy in Sweden which is formed from different concepts. This thesis work is aimed to evaluate the LHOVRA technique with a focus on the O-function. Hence, two different scenarios, one with O-function and one without O-function were implemented in the micro traffic simulation software, VISSIM. VISSIM has been used to simulate the traffic situation of the Gamla Övägen – Albrektsvägen intersection by considering the LHOVRA scenario (with O-function) as well as traditional scenario (without O-function) of the intersection. Field measurements were used as input data for VISSIM simulation. The VISSIM simulation model was calibrated to find a close match between simulated and real data. Finally, a comparison of alternatives was carried out based on traffic performance and traffic safety measurements. The simulation experiment results gained by the comparisons were presented a higher time-to-collision value. The higher time-to-collision value the safer situation is. Both delays and travel time were reduced to primary road traffic.