Crash- and Simulation-Based Safety Performance Evaluation of Freeway Rest Area

Hyeonseo Kim, Kyeongjoo Kwon, Nuri Park, Juneyoung Park and Mohamed Abdel-Aty
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Hyeonseo Kim: Department of Smart City Engineering, Hanyang University, Ansan 15588, Korea
Kyeongjoo Kwon: Department of Transportation and Logistics Engineering, Hanyang University, Ansan 15588, Korea
Nuri Park: Department of Smart City Engineering, Hanyang University, Ansan 15588, Korea
Juneyoung Park: Department of Smart City Engineering, Hanyang University, Ansan 15588, Korea
Mohamed Abdel-Aty: Department of Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32816, USA

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 9, 1-13

Abstract: The main objective of this study was to evaluate the safety effects caused by altering the lengths of deceleration and acceleration lanes at rest areas on expressways in Korea. Although general conclusions can be found through crash-based safety analysis, to examine more specific optimal conditions considering various traffic conditions, this study proposes a novel framework to explore and evaluate crash-based and simulation-based safety performances. For this purpose, the safety performance function (SPF) and crash modification factor (CMF) were developed to reflect real-world safety impacts. To consider nonlinear trends of the parameters, nonlinearizing link functions were introduced into the analysis. Two types of simulation analyses were conducted to (1) find the combination of surrogate safety measures (SSMs) that best fit with the crash-based safety performance results and (2) determine the optimal lengths of deceleration lane and acceleration lanes for different traffic conditions. The results showed that the best length of deceleration lane of a rest area is between 240 and 260 m, depending on the traffic conditions. The results also indicated that the optimal length of acceleration lane of a rest area is between 385 and 400 m, depending on the traffic parameters. The findings of this study could be used to determine the safety solutions with a micro-traffic simulator.

Keywords: safety performance; traffic simulation; surrogate safety; rest area; crash modification factor (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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