With the problems inherent in preserving freedom of movement in rapidly developing urban areas, many agencies are advising the use of transitway facilities to provide exclusive guideways for buses, carpool, and vanpools in congested freeway corridors. Vehicles wishing to gain access to the earlier high occupancy vehicle (HOV) facilities were required to weave across heavily travelled, general-purpose freeway lanes. However, in recent years, the need for direct access to these facilities has been recognised. For example, in Orange County, California, a system of transit ways 19.4 miles long is being proposed for the major freeway corridors. With this priority system, a network of direct access locations is being linked to the surrounding arterial system. In designing this network, a set of planning guidelines was developed to select the best individual access locations to be included. This paper describes these planning guidelines, involving growth trends, infrastructure issues, and design considerations, which should be useful to transportation planners and engineers in analysing transitway access locations.
Abstract