Traffic Control Improvements for Urban Arterial Work Zones

Numerous improvement projects on urban arterial streets cause significant changes in traffic operation and safety. A review of the design standard documents shows that the majority of guidelines related to work zone design do not adequately reflect the specifics of urban arterial streets. In turn, the traffic control plan developments are greatly affected by the designers' background and experience. Therefore, the conducted study was focused on identifying current traffic control problems on urban arterial street work zones, developing countermeasures for improvements, and developing recommendations for changes to the Texas Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, and for supplemental guidelines on traffic control plan development. Accident statistics analysis, field observations of work zones on urban arterial streets and the questionnaire survey of Texas Department of Transportation personnel identified existing traffic control problems. Based on the joint analysis of the identified problems and principles of human perception, the guidelines for traffic control plans on urban arterial street work zones were developed. The development includes recommendations for urban street work zone signing and traffic control device location, better suited to human abilities and behavior. The effectiveness of the developed recommendations was tested in computer experiments and field studies.