Implementations of a variety of highway work-zone activities have been widely recognized as main contributors to the increasing amounts of non-recurrent congestion and to deteriorating traffic safety. To contend with the safety and delay related issues associated with work-zone activities, most state highway agencies over the past decade have devoted considerable resources to improve work-zone operations and to implement more sophisticated traffic control strategies. However, the effectiveness of those operational or control strategies is conditioned on a good estimate of the traffic volume though the work zone and amount of traffic diverting to alternate routes, as well as their resulting traffic impacts. Unfortunately, the ability to reliably estimate traffic diverting from work zones has not been adequately addressed, either in the professional literature or in practice. This project conducts an empirical study of traffic diversion at freeway work zones based on the analysis of collected field data. In addition, this study provides an understanding of how drivers behave when they encounter a work zone ahead. (Author/publisher)
Abstract