Browsing by Author "Hong, Feili"
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Item The role of road user costs in benefit-cost analysis.(2009-12) Hong, FeiliAn economically and socially healthy urban region always needs to move people and goods in a timely fashion. However, with the development of urban land, many corridors in urban regions suffer from great congestion, since demand is close to or greater than the capacity of the roadways. In order to improve traffic conditions, transportation planners need to identify and select the best projects that will expand and upgrade existing facilities by using Benefit-Cost Analysis. Usually, Benefit-Cost Analysis assists transportation planners by balancing the consideration of user benefits against the total costs of the projects, by translating them into monetary terms. The principal elements in Benefit-Cost Analysis are travel time costs, vehicle operation costs, and safety costs. These elements of a Base Case are compared to those of one or more Project Alternatives that offer significant improvements. However, the Road User Costs (RUC) during construction, which have the same three components, is often ignored in Benefit Cost Analysis. When RUC is significant, it can generate different results in a Benefit Costs Analysis. The objective of this study is to propose an improved process of Benefit-Cost Analysis, evaluating investment costs and all user costs and benefits during construction and during a facilities' lifetime. Furthermore, since comprehensive calculations of areawide RUC during the construction phase are often lacking, this study also proposes three procedures of user cost calculation by utilizing three levels of analytical tools: one Sketch-Planning Tool (specifically, QuickZone); one Travel Demand Model (Cube Voyager); and one Microscopic Simulator (AIMSUN). In order to implement this improved procedure of Benefit-Cost Analysis, the TH-36 reconstruction project, in North St Paul, Minnesota, was utilized. Through conducting Benefit-Cost Analysis of two planned construction alternatives, Full Closure and Partial Closure, this study concluded that RUC during the construction phase are important and the selection of an optimal construction alternative can be different due to the inclusion of RUC.Item TH-36 Full Closure Construction: Evaluation of Traffic Operations Alternatives(Minnesota Department of Transportation, 2010-01) Hourdos, John; Hong, FeiliAccording to the 2007 Urban Mobility Report, $78 billion was lost due to congestion on urban roadways. Many urban corridors around the country experience demand that is close to or greater than the available capacity. Although most agree that the transportation system has matured and that we will not build ourselves out of congestion, existing infrastructure still often requires expansion. Such expansion in an already developed system most likely does not involve new roadway construction but results in existing roadway upgrades. Such roadways normally already serve considerable demand, a fact that increases the importance of the impact to the roadway users, estimated as Road User Costs (RUCs), and raises safety concerns both for the driving public as well as for the people working on reconstruction projects. New construction methods like Full Road Closure claim to reduce RUCs as well as reduce capital costs. This project follows the first large-scale Full Closure in Minnesota in an attempt to learn from the experience and propose the most appropriate tools and methodologies for planning, staging, and executing the construction. For the latter, three traffic analysis tools are selected for estimating RUCs due to the construction project. Their effort and data requirements, as well as their accuracy is evaluated and compared to the empirical, engineering-judgment-based, method used by Mn/DOT.