IMPACT OF EXPRESSWAY RECONSTRUCTION ON ADJACENT TRAFFIC OPERATIONS

Highway reconstruction places heavy demands on government budgets and traveler patience. Traffic engineers assume great responsibility in that they develop the procedures to assess and mitigate the impacts associated with major construction diversions. This article reports on the assessment of the impacts of an expressway reconstruction project on adjacent traffic operations in Montreal, Canada. The case in point, Metropolitan Boulevard (Autoroute 40), is a six-lane elevated highway that carries more than 140,000 vehicles per day as well as a vital link in the Montreal highway network and the Trans-Canada highway system. The authors found that the greatest impact of reconstruction is related to the effect of diverted traffic on the parallel service roads. Issues such as lane width, barriers, signal timing, alternate routes, and surveillance are addressed.