The lane closures caused by the work zone at the approaches create a negative impact on the operational effectiveness of the signalized intersections. This paper presents an innovative design for intersections with work zones to improve the intersection’s practical capacity. In this design, the lanes in the leg with work zone can be used dynamically as approach and exit lanes during different periods of a signal cycle by using the pre-signal. An optimization model for an optimal geometric layout and signal timing design is built to capture real-world operational constraints, including the lane assignment, the signal timing of the main signal and pre-signal, the distance of the mixed-usage area and the transition area, and the degree of saturation restriction. A case study and extensive numerical analysis demonstrate the effectiveness of the prospective design as compared with conventional designs under different geometric layout and traffic demand situations. Overall, the proposed design can lead to an increment in the practical capacity of the intersection with a work zone (by up to 30%) and reduce the average vehicular delay accordingly (by 50%) without necessitating an expansion of the intersection. The results show that the promising application of the proposed design when the length of the work zone is less than 160 m.@en

The intersection with special width approach lane (SWAL) is a newly proposed unconventional intersection design. A microscopic traffic flow model was proposed for describing the operation of vehicles at signalised intersections with SWAL. The operation process of driving on the SWAL was divided into four segments, including entering segment, transition segment, special width lane segment, and exiting segment. The car-following and lane selection behaviours of vehicles in these segments are analysed. The parameters used in the model were calibrated using the field data collected in Germany. The proposed model was realised in a time-discretised simulation. The sensitivity analyses of geometric, traffic, and signal factors were conducted. The results show that for the car-following behaviour, the passenger cars on the narrowed lanes cannot drive as efficient as on the normal width lane. For lane selection behaviour, it mainly depends on the distance between the two nearest vehicles in front of the two narrow lanes. The effectiveness of the SWAL depends on whether it is long enough to accommodate the queuing vehicles, which is a combined result of the layout design and the signal timing.@en