My undergraduate research project focus on developing guidelines for the vehicle access while designing development areas. There are many factors determine the access pathways to a development area. Improper access leads to critical issues with respect to user inconvenience, traffic delays and road safety.
The guidelines for the design of vehicle access for land use development is proposed based on traffic engineering parameters; traffic flow level, type of main traffic roads, traffic management strategies in operation that will minimize any potential negative impact.
For the development of the guidelines, VISSIM simulations, traffic surveys, questionnaire surveys, observations and findings in literature were used. Traffic streams and traffic management strategies were considered within Colombo Suburban areas to establish the guidelines. These guidelines will be useful for the regulators and developers as well as public to mitigate the adverse impacts in main traffic stream due to access gates.
Different types of scenarios were considered while developing the guidelines. Types of roads; two lanes, multi lanes, one-way traffic and bidirectional traffic, low, medium and high traffic flows, with center median and without center median and etc. At least one development site was selected to validate the parameters and results. Further, availability of side streets, road frontage, back streets were also considered while obtaining results. User inconvenience level was identified using questionnaire survey.
