Comprehensive Operation Risk Assessment of a Highway Maintenance Area Based on Reliability

Abstract

To study the influence of various working conditions on traffic safety in the maintenance area of a mountain expressway, 675 groups of PTV VISSIM traffic simulation experiments were designed with various traffic organization modes, traffic volumes, traffic compositions, activity area lengths, and speed limit values. The results show that the activity area length of a closed lane, a compressed lane, and a borrowed opposite lane had no marked influence on the traffic conflicts. There was a significant positive correlation between the proportion of trucks and the number of traffic conflicts, and the number of traffic conflicts increased significantly with an increase in traffic volume. In the closed lane and borrowed opposite lane scenarios, the increase in traffic conflicts was more obvious with the increase in traffic volume. There were obvious differences in the number of traffic conflicts under different forms of traffic organization. The number of conflicts in the compressed lane scenario was the lowest, and in the borrowed opposite lane scenario the number of conflicts was the highest. There was a significant correlation between a decrease in the speed limit and an increase in the number of traffic conflicts. Finally, with traffic volume, truck proportion, and speed limit values as independent variables and reliability as a dependent variable, linear regression equations of reliability were established for three traffic organization scenarios: closed lane, borrowed opposite lane, and compressed lane.