Selecting Four-Leg Intersections for Crossing Elimination in Evacuations

Abstract

This study investigates the implementation of crossing elimination con-figurations at intersections, by neighborhood characteristics; a “neighborhood” is defined by its surrounding intersections and by supply and demand situations to identify evacuation travel time impacts and situations and crossing elimination configurations that should be considered and further investigated for implementation in practice or should be avoided in practice. A hypothetical network of 41 signalized intersections modeled in microscopic simulation software was used to test 104 scenarios. On the basis of the analyses, crossing elimination should be considered and should be further investigated for evacuations with high demand and when the evacuation flow is asymmetric but oriented with the major roads. Crossing elimination should generally be avoided or carefully implemented when the evacuation flow is asymmetric but oriented with the minor roads and when destinations aligned with major roads (rather than minor ones) are unreachable (in at least one of the two directions). This latter situation is the one exception to the high demand recommendation. Pairing of intersection location and crossing elimination configuration is more complicated in terms of the effects on total travel times across scenarios.