Streets

The rapidly and significantly growth of the population in the United States has caused expansion of the urban areas to accommodate more residential facilities.. Thus, the demand for more efficient intersection designs is a high priority, as wasted fuel and travel time increases each year. A new method to solve the congestion issue is the creation of unconventional arterial intersection designs (UAID). The objective of this study is to compare the operational and environmental performance of three UAIDs called Left-turn Bypass, Diverging Flow, and Displaced Left-turn intersections. This study will evaluate the UAIDs in the isolated manner and then compare the intersections in a network using an existing corridor in the state of Florida. The microscopic simulation platform VISSIM v. 5.10 will be used to test different scenarios. The results indicated that the Displaced Left-turn consistently reports better results for average delay of less than 20 seconds per vehicle.

In light of the growing traffic demand and the futility of the conventional solutions, many states have been considering alternative intersection designs. Researchers have demonstrated the benefits of several unconventional intersection designs and their implementation at different sites throughout the United States and abroad have delivered significant improvement in traffic compared to the conventional intersections. A signalized and un-signalized roundabout, a Continuous Flow Intersection, and a Parallel Flow Intersection have been evaluated and compared in this research as viable alternatives to the traditional single intersection. Using micro-simulation platforms, AIMSUN 6.0 and VISSIM 5.10, models of each intersection are evaluated for low, medium, and high entrance volumes. The analysis revealed that the Roundabout performs better at low entering volumes while the Continuous flow yields better results at high volumes.