Although New Jersey jughandle intersections (NJJIs) have been around for over five decades, researchers have not yet developed a simplified procedure to evaluate their traffic performance and compare them with conventional at-grade intersections. A limited number of studies have reported qualitative and quantitative comparisons of NJJIs. There have been, however, no readily available tools for traffic engineers and planners to estimate average delays, average numbers of stops, and maximum queues. For this study, researchers used VISSIM simulations to model typical geometries over a wide distribution of traffic flow conditions for three NJJI design. Comparisons of NJJIs with conventional intersections for similar volume conditions revealed that NJJIs produced lower average intersection delays and higher intersection capacities for near-saturated traffic conditions and similar traffic performance for undersaturated conditions. Practitioners can use statistical models documented in this study to assess average intersection delays, average number of stops per vehicle, and maximum queue lengths for three types of NJJIs. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting