• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.79-87
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• 2007

The interchanges of urban freeways have many problems with traffic operation due to high off-ramp flows and frequent congestion at adjacent intersections. The flow exiting from off-ramps is affected by the operational status and traffic volume conditions of the nearest signalized intersection. As a result, off-ramp flow cannot exit and the queue backs up the freeway mainline when queues from the signalized intersection form up to the junction of the off-ramp and street. The spacing between an off-ramp and an adjacent intersection is likely to determine the traffic conditions at the adjacent intersection. However, the current design guidelines do not consider such a factor. This study is to develop a model calculating the spacing between off-ramps and adjacent intersections considering the signal, traffic, and road conditions. The variables affecting the model in this study are effective green time (g/C), volume-capacity ratio (v/c), the number of lanes, and off-ramp volume. Various scenarios are designed to represent the effects of the variables and the road networks are constructed using VISSIM, which is a common traffic micro-simulation software package. The queue length is derived from VISSIM and this length is considered as the recommended spacing between the off-ramp and the adjacent intersection. Through the simulation analysis, regression models are developed to calculate the queue length reflecting the various conditions such as signals, traffic, and road configurations. The developed model can be used to create road design guidelines to determine the location of off-ramps in the planning stage.