• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.25 no.2 s.95
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• pp.17-26
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• 2007

Because the prime objective of the current preemption methods at signalized intersections near highway-railroad grade crossings(IHRGCs) is to clear the crossing, secondary objectives such as safe pedestrian crossing time and minimized delay often are given less consideration or are ignored completely during the preemption. Under certain circumstances state-of-the-practice traffic signal preemption strategies may cause serious pedestrian safety and efficiency problems at IHRGCs. An improved transition preemption strategy(ITPS) that is specifically designed to improve intersection performance while maintaining or improving the current level of safety was developed by Cho and Rilett. Even if the new transition preemption strategy improved both the safety and efficiency of IHRGCs, the performance of the strategy is affected by train speed. Understanding the impact of this factor is essential in order to implement ITPS. In this paper, the effects of train speed were analyzed using a VISSIM simulation model which was calibrated to field conditions. It was concluded that the delay is affected more by train speed than the transitional preemption strategy and the safety of the intersection is not affected by train speed once an advanced preemption warning time(APWT) is equal to or greater than 90 seconds.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.24 no.4 s.90
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• pp.93-101
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• 2006

The signalized intersections near highway-railroad grade crossing are operated without signal preemption in Korea when trains are approaching the crossing. This signal operation is very dangerous because queues from the intersection can extend back over the track, thereby creating the Potential for a serious vehicle-train accident. And the queues from the crossing can extend to the intersection with the normal signal operation while trains Pass the crossing. In this case the intersection is disrupted, and delay and the Potential for vehicle accident increase highly In order to improve the intersection performance and Protect the accident the crossings and intersections. signal Preemption designed to provide a special control mode should be implemented. In this study it was shown that intersection Performance near highway-railroad grade crossing improved using signal preemption. When signal Preemption is implemented at the test site, the delay was reduced by about 9sec/veh. Even though there were vehicle-train accidents at the crossing in all 30 simulations without signal preemption. there was no vehicle-train accidents at all when signal preemption is used.