Kroeger, Dennis

The purpose of this project, "Trucks and Twin Cities Traffic Management," is to identify strategies that will reduce congestion for trucks traveling within and through the Twin Cities. The planning and development of most highway facilities focuses on the general needs of the majority of traffic in the traffic stream. However, the performance, function, and purpose of heavy trucks are dissimilar to those of the majority of the vehicles in the traffic stream. It is for this reason that the National Cooperative Highway Research synthesis report 314 identified a number of improvements that state transportation agencies have implemented, or are planning to implement, that focus on the unique needs of trucks to better accommodate truck-borne freight traffic. Additionally, to help reduce delays and congestion a number of urban areas have conducted studies of the unique issues trucks face. The study first identified an exhaustive list of potentially feasible strategies and then through iterative steps narrowed these down to the most promising. Five strategies were ultimately selected. The report focuses on issues related to the five strategies and their implementation.

This research project evaluated the effectiveness of speed reduction techniques in high pedestrian areas and provided traffic speed data to facilitate the validation of a traffic calming study at the University of Minnesota's Human Factors Research Laboratory. Researchers collected speed data at four selected study sites under existing conditions and at two sites, in Twin Lakes and Bemidji Lake, both under existing conditions and after the installation of proposed speed reduction strategies. The strategies at the Twin Lakes site consisted of removable pedestrian islands and pedestrian crossing signs. At Bemidji Lake, a dynamic variable message sign was installed. The research study shows that the traffic calming strategy at Twin Lakes effectively reduced the mean speed and improved speed limit compliance in both the short and long term. Despite proven effectiveness, the deployed speed reduction treatment in Bemidji Lake failed to lower the speed at the study site.