Safety effectiveness of truck lane restrictions: a case study on Texas urban corridors. Issue 1 (2nd January 2020) - Das, Subasish
ABSTRACT: Truck lane restrictions (TLRs) have become increasingly popular throughout the United States over the last 20 years due to the improvement in traffic operations and safety, pavement life, and other associated factors. This study examines the safety performance of the TLRs that have been implemented in the North Texas region. TLR prohibit semi- trucks (trucks) from using the left-most freeway lane, or inner lane, except in passing or emergency maneuvers. This study uses 16 sites with TLR in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to conduct an observational before-after study. For safety effectiveness analysis, it is always hard to get three years before and three years after data. For immediate safety effectiveness analysis, sophisticated predictive tools could be used in estimating 'after' year crashes. This study used the Enhanced Interchange Safety Analysis Tool (ISATe) to supplement the limited after year crash data. This study used Empirical Bayes (EB) method due to its consideration of regression-to-mean bias. The findings show that TLRs perform an overall positive safety effectiveness for large truck-involved fatal and injury crashes for six-lane roadways. This study concludes that implementing TLR as a truck-related safety strategy which are cost-effective to implement, may contribute to improving safety on urban freeways.