Evaluation of work zone management strategies: The FSM bridge case study

Rising traffic congestion is an inevitable condition in large and growing metropolitan areas across the world. Traffic congestion has become one of the most famous term in the biggest problems of modern and civilized societies. Main reasons of traffic congestion are work zones, bottlenecks and incidents. Especially, work zones cause decrease in capacity of the roads which already serve at capacity. Work zones create 10% of the traffic congestion in the U.S. (FHWA, 2005) and 11% of the traffic congestion in Istanbul (Ergün and Şahin, 2006). Additionally, work zones cause bottlenecks and more incidents. Traffic analysis and knowledge gained from past experiences are necessary to effectively deal with congestion. Hence, the main goals of this study are (i) conducting comprehensive research on work zone management studies, traffic surveillance systems and data archiving in the world, the authorities responsible for the traffic management and ITS implementations in Istanbul, (ii) evaluating work zone management strategies used in the FSM Bridge case study, (iii) comparing the effectiveness of the implemented strategies before and after work zone management and (iv) providing future recommendations based on the evaluation results. To achieve these goals; change in traffic flow parameters, peak-hours, queues, vehicle types, alternative routes, the number of incidents, and the effects of toll policies, bottlenecks and the number of toll booths before and after work zone management are analyzed. With this thesis, it is aimed to provide the authorities of Istanbul with the recommendations for developing solutions to the existing and similar future problems.