Developing HOV Lane and Ramp Meter Analysis Frameworks for Alberta Highways

• Author / Creator

  Woo, Matthew

• The Province of Alberta constructs new highways and widens existing roadways relying responding to demand. Absent from these improvements, however, are other capacity expansion and demand management strategies such as high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes and ramp metering—strategies that exist on other Canadian urban highways. Since HOV lanes and ramp metering have not been implemented and a process for planning and analysis is absent in Alberta Transportation’s engineering guidelines, I develop a framework, guiding the planning and engineering process to study the viability and design of these strategies at differing levels of detail.
  I develop this framework through first conducting a literature review, providing a background on HOV lanes, ramp metering, and commonly used traffic analysis tools. HOV lanes shift travel to higher-density modes while ramp meters maintain free-flow conditions on a highway. Guidelines are then established for conducting a high-level, mid-level and detailed study in order to test various design scenarios. With these outlined studies, I apply this framework as a case study to Hwy 2 (HOV lanes) and Hwy 216 (ramp metering), to examine the location-specific data needs and study requirements.
  Through this thesis, I develop a planning framework which allows analysts to test the operational impacts of various design configurations and travel demand management (TDM) policies such as occupancy restrictions on HOV lanes and signal control systems for ramp meters. This connects the existing literature for design guidelines and operational studies, highlighting how various elements of design may be tested at each level of analysis. I also examine data availability for conducting these analyses, identifying occupancy data and model calibration data as the most significant needs.
  The framework developed by this thesis provides a foundation for engineers and transportation planners, by organizing the steps of analysis and helping identify data needs. Although many highway engineering projects follow a similar process, this framework is specifically applied to Alberta and Alberta Transportation’s planning process.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Ramp Metering
  • Alberta Highways
  • HOV Lanes
  • Highway Planning
  • Transportation Planning

• Graduation date

  Fall 2018

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3BN9XJ9M

• License

  Permission is hereby granted to the University of Alberta Libraries to reproduce single copies of this thesis and to lend or sell such copies for private, scholarly or scientific research purposes only. Where the thesis is converted to, or otherwise made available in digital form, the University of Alberta will advise potential users of the thesis of these terms. The author reserves all other publication and other rights in association with the copyright in the thesis and, except as herein before provided, neither the thesis nor any substantial portion thereof may be printed or otherwise reproduced in any material form whatsoever without the author's prior written permission.