Safety Impacts of New Traffic Management Techniques

About this Document

Government agencies all over the nation have implemented and evaluated new Traffic Management Techniques (TMTs) in the past decade to increase the efficiency of the existing transportation system in innovative manner with minimal costs. Some of the TMTs implemented in the past decade include High Occupancy Vehicles (HOV), High Occupancy Toll (HOT), Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), and Truck Only Lanes.

However, due to the fact that there have been a limited number of applications and that many of those have been relatively recent implementations, historical data on safety and traffic operations is sparse. Few studies have been conducted documenting the relative traffic operational and safety implications of these TMTs. While there is limited understanding of the operational and safety performance for the existing TMT deployments, there is almost no information on untested TMTs such as Truck Only Toll (TOT) facilities, which are at a conceptual stage. Identifying this knowledge gap, the Office of the Secretary of Transportation issued a solicitation to conduct research to develop a methodology to assess the safety impacts of existing and proposed TMTs like HOT and TOT respectively. The four TMTs (i.e., HOV, HOT, TOT, and, dedicated lane BRT) will be referred to as “selected TMTs” or “managed lane strategies” in this document.