In the past two decades, highway construction in China has grown rapidly. Meanwhile, there has been a series of scientific research achievements, including those in the area of highway geometric design, that definitely contributed to the highway construction development. This paper reviews the following major issues: (1) Technical standards research in which highway classification, design speed, standard vehicle used for traffic capacity calculation, etc., were discussed; (2) Research and developments on horizontal alignment design theories, as well as software development and its large-scale applications (Both the theories and their computer-aided implementations are valuable and quite unique with their Chinese characteristics.); (3) Approaches on roadway geometry related to safety (Some preliminary work such as accident prediction models for horizontal curves were initiated.); (4) Introduction of the latest highway design concept, sustainable highway geometry design, and some of its practical methods (This concept and practice actually reflect the similar ideas of context-sensitive design and flexibility design emphasized in the United States and in many European countries.); and (5) Introduction of some approaches to urban intersection performance improvement. The paper concludes that there still remain problems and challenges to be solved. Those problems and challenges include the issues of geometric design policies, updated design concepts and methods, flexibility in highway design, context-sensitive design, and design detail specifications.
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