Operational Effects of Design of Access Points on Katy Freeway Managed Lanes in Houston, Texas
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abstract
The construction of the managed lane facility on the Katy Freeway in Houston, Texas, provided a unique opportunity to meet the needs of motorists by providing a completely new set of access points to and from the managed lane facility as compared with many similar facilities that were predominantly retrofit installations. The access points on the Katy Freeway managed lanes were intended to provide timely, useful access between the managed lanes and the I-10 general purpose lanes at locations that facilitated effective access to origins and destinations beyond the freeway. Researchers investigated operational characteristics of selected access points to assess how they were being used by motorists. Provided here are an overview of the access points on the Katy Freeway managed lanes, a discussion of the field data collected and how they were reduced and analyzed, and the research team's conclusions concerning how the access points performed on the basis of the analysis. The study analyzed the number of ingress and egress maneuvers at selected access points and compared them with traffic volumes in the managed lanes and adjacent general purpose lanes, with a focus on the amount of time drivers took to make their maneuvers and where the maneuvers occurred within the access points.
