Abstract
The increasing congestion problems faced by most metropolitan areas have resulted in the search for new ways to control the traffic congestion problem. Most cities have relied for years in the addition of new lanes to existing streets to alleviate this problem. Access management is an alternative to lane additions. Through the control of access driveways, signal spacing, and median treatments, access management can increase the efficiency and safety of arterial streets. This research investigates the use of the Federal Highway Administrations s TRAF-NETSIM computer simulation program as a tool to evaluate the effects of access management treatments on urban arterial streets. TRAF-NETSIM was chosen because of its well known reputation in replicating traffic conditions. Three four-lane arterials with half-mile signal spacing and restrictive median breaks with directional left-turn ingress and three six-lane arterials with quarter-mile signal spacing and no access control were compared in an effort to prove that the former could be as efficient as the later. The results were not conclusive though there appears to be a trend indicating more efficiency with the four-lane designs. The major finding seems to be that TRAF-NETSIM may not be the best tool to study access management due to the many problems that it presents for this type of application. The most relevant to this research being the difficulty to code U-turns.
Irizarry Gutierrez, Nelson (1995). Evaluation of access management on urban arterial streets using TRAF-NETSIM. Master's thesis, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from
https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /ETD -TAMU -1995 -THESIS -I75.