The Potential of Unconventional Intersections & Interchanges to Improve Traffic Flow and Traffic Safety in the Netherlands

Abstract

The Netherlands faces the challenge, especially in the coming years, of coping with the continuous increase in traffic volumes and reducing the number of road casualties. A way to tackle this challenge is by constructing unconventional (American) designs, which aim to reduce travel time and improve traffic safety by rerouting left-turns. This study focused on investigating whether unconventional designs, consisting of intersections and interchanges, have this potential to improve the traffic situation, under typical Dutch circumstances. Ten unconventional designs were analyzed and reduced to four, which were then extensively researched. These are: Median U-Turn, Quadrant Roadway, Diverging Diamond Interchange, and the Single-Point Urban Interchange. A desk investigation was constructed using Sustainable Safety principles, along with American and Dutch design guidelines, to determine necessary modifications to use these American designs in the Netherlands. Further, traffic models were built to determine the impact of the designs on traffic flow, traffic safety, and its surroundings. Lastly, the process to build these designs in the Netherlands were identified. All in all, the results show that the unconventional designs have a great potential to improve the traffic flow and traffic safety in the Netherlands. Additionally, customization is important due to the increasing urbanization, meaning that these unconventional designs might not have many use cases in the Netherlands, however, on locations where they can be built (i.e., locations with the right amount of traffic from certain driving directions), they can have a large positive effect on the traffic situation, while remaining a compact design.