Analysis of Vertical Traffic Calming Measures in Impacts on Road Safety and Environment in Lithuania State Roads

Abstract

Several years after implementation of vertical traffic calming measures on roads, crossing cities and settlements, for the first time in Lithuania the research was carried out to determine their effect on the change in the number of accidents, their severity and noise within the operation zone of speed humps, raised pedestrian crossings and speed bumps. The paper present research methodology and analysis of results of vertical traffic calming influence to the road safety and environment in Lithuania roads. It presents that engineering measures have a positive impact on the improvement of the road index to safety. The study of vertical traffic calming measures impact to environment showed that it does not increase equivalent noise level of vehicle in its installation places.

Simulating the Effect of Speed Humps on the U-Turn Traffic

“…Speed humps have the ability to reduce the injury accidents about 41% according to Jateikienė, et al [14]. Similar findings were obtained by Čygaitė [15] who examined the effect of speed humps in Lithuania. The later suggested that number of killed people were reduced by 100%.…”

“…Chen et al [16] suggested that the use of speed humps in New York City reduced the fatal and injury accidents by 33%. Based on data from Iraq U-turn sites, Al-Obaedi [15] reported that speed humps reduced the merging time by more than 50%. Shwaly et al [17], based on a questionnaire in Egypt, found that both vehicle speeds and accident rates significantly reduced as the effect of speed humps.…”

Traffic Calming Measures: An Evaluation of the Effect on Driving Speed

“…Where distance between two vertical traffic calming measures is 200-400 m, vehicles have time to accelerate and to reach a speed even 10 km/h higher than the speed limit. Taking into consideration the results of their previous studies [25,26] and the review of foreign legal acts and studies, the authors suggest new recommendations related to the distance between speed calming measures. The currently valid distances in Lithuania (R ISEP 10) and distances recommended by the authors are given in Table 2.…”

Unified methodology for estimating efficiency of traffic calming measures – example of Estonia

“…Other speed related efficiency parameters are 85 th percentile speed, standard deviation of longitudinal acceleration and deceleration, percentage of drivers exceeding the speed limit, the highest speeds, 10 mph pace (Ariën et al 2013(Ariën et al , 2014Corkle et al 2002;Mountain et al 2005). Among other commonly used TCM efficiency parameters are reduction of traffic volume, change in the number of fatal and injury accidents, traffic noise level, vehicle emission and public health impact (Čygaitė et al 2014;Huang, Cynecki 2001;Lee et al 2013). Some authors measure TCM efficiency as a delay per TCM during emergency transport (Berthod 2011), or delay time for crossing the road (Garrod et al 2002), cost of traffic calming project and maintenance costs (Garrod et al 2002, Langdon 2003.…”

“…Other authors estimate such effeciency parameters as private expenditures in fuel and vehicle maintenance (Jazcilevich et al 2015), impact on public transport (Banister 2009) and cyclists (Pinkerton et al 2013). Literature analysis shows that public acceptance has become an important TCM efficiency component (Čygaitė et al 2014;El-Basyouny, El-Bassiouni 2013;Garrod et al 2002). Nevertheless the most common efficiency parameters of TCM are connected to speed, traffic volume and number of accidents.…”