@article{ref1,
title="Evaluating the sustainable traffic flow operational features of an exclusive spur dike U-turn lane design",
journal="PLoS one",
year="2019",
author="Shao, Yang and Han, Xueyan and Wu, Huan and Shan, Huimin and Yang, Shaowei and Claudel, Christian G.",
volume="14",
number="4",
pages="e0214759-e0214759",
abstract="The traditional U-turn design has significantly improved traffic operations for relieving traffic congestion. However, the U-turn diversion and merge segments still cause traffic conflicts and delays. In this paper, an exclusive spur dike U-turn lane (ESUL) is proposed with the aim of addressing the disadvantages of the traditional U-turn design. ESUL provides a separate U-turn lane to diverge, decelerate, U-turn, accelerate and merge without interacting with through traffic. The effectiveness of ESUL is demonstrated through a field data investigation, simulation and analysis with VISSIM software. The proposed design is evaluated in terms of three parameters: travel time, delay and number of stops. Compared to the traditional U-turn design, ESUL can reduce travel time by 29.15%, delay by 66.70% and the number of stops by 100% at most. The results showed that ESUL has better performance than the traditional U-turn design and could be implemented to reduce traffic congestion and the potential hazards caused by U-turn maneuvers.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1932-6203",
doi="10.1371/journal.pone.0214759",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0214759"
}