Date of Award

2015

Degree Type

Thesis

Department

Civil and Environmental Engineering

First Advisor

Jenkins, Jacqueline Marie

Subject Headings

Lane closures state transportation department agencies policies procedures data collection data cataloging trend analysis

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis was to compare the specific performance measures used by various state transportation agencies across the United States to evaluate the impact of proposed lane closures on the interstate system and decide whether the impact is acceptable or not, and thus whether or not to approve the proposed lane closure. Information about the policies, processes, and procedures for approving lane closures was obtained through a combination of searching the webpages of individual state departments of transportation, downloading pertinent materials, emailing requests for information, and contacting agency personnel by telephone. The collected documents and notes taken during telephone conversation were reviewed and details about the criteria being used by 41 state transportation agencies for the approval of lane closures were extracted. A trend analysis was performed to determine whether the use of any criterion was more popular. The use of several criteria was examined across the whole nation, within geographical regions, and finally across the same regions. The results of the analysis revealed that some state transportation agencies use multiple criteria. For the 41 states examined, 23 use volume to capacity ratio, 18 used delay, 6 used queue length, and 4 used level of service. Thus, the most popular criterion used across the nation is the volume to capacity ratio. The analysis within geographical regions revealed that in the Central and North Central, Northeast and Southeast regions the volume to capacity ratio is the most popular criterion while in the Northwest and Southwest regions a delay criterion is the most popular criterion. The analysis across geographic regions revealed that the delay criterion is most popular in the Southwest region, the level of service criterion is most popular in the Northwest region, the capacity and queue length criteria is most popular in the Central and North Central region. Surprisingly, the queue length, which is probably the easiest of the performance

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