Analysis of alternative treatments for left turn bicycles at tandem intersections

Jing Zhao, Jiachao Yan and Jiawen Wang

Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 2019, vol. 126, issue C, 314-328

Abstract: To improve the practical capacity of the tandem intersections and eliminate the conflicts between left-turn bicycles and left-turn vehicles at the main signal, four alternative designs are proposed from the aspects of time separation and spatial separation. In terms of time separation, left-turn bicycles and left-turn vehicles are separated by the two-step crossing for left-turn bicycles design and the exclusive phase for pedestrian and bicycles design. In terms of spatial separation, exclusive passing space for left-turn bicycles is provided by using partial left-turn design in the sorting area and moving the stop line backward. A linear programming model, which combining four optimization designs into one unified optimization framework, is established with the objective of maximizing the practical capacity of vehicles. A case study and extensive numerical analysis are used to validate the effectiveness and identify the application domain of these alternative designs. The results demonstrate the promising effect of the two-step crossing for left-turn bicycles design and the moving the stop line backward design in avoiding conflicts between left-turn bicycles and vehicles while improving the vehicular capacity. The two-step crossing for left-turn bicycles design can improve 10–20% vehicular capacity under almost all analysis conditions, but it increases the delay of left-turn bicycles. The benefit of the moving stop line backward design is sensitive to cycle length and the proportion of left-turn vehicles. It performs well when the cycle time exceeds 90 s, and the proportion of left-turn vehicles exceeds 30%.

Keywords: Bicycles; Tandem intersection; Unconventional design; Optimization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965856419303490
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:transa:v:126:y:2019:i:c:p:314-328

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
https://shop.elsevie ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.tra.2019.06.020

Access Statistics for this article

Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice is currently edited by John (J.M.) Rose

More articles in Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().