Evaluating the sustainable traffic flow operational features of an exclusive spur dike U-turn lane design

The traditional U-turn design has significantly improved traffic operations for relieving traffic congestion. However, the U-turn diversion and merge segments still cause traffic conflicts and delays. In this paper, an exclusive spur dike U-turn lane (ESUL) is proposed with the aim of addressing the disadvantages of the traditional U-turn design. ESUL provides a separate U-turn lane to diverge, decelerate, U-turn, accelerate and merge without interacting with through traffic. The effectiveness of ESUL is demonstrated through a field data investigation, simulation and analysis with VISSIM software. The proposed design is evaluated in terms of three parameters: travel time, delay and number of stops. Compared to the traditional U-turn design, ESUL can reduce travel time by 29.15%, delay by 66.70% and the number of stops by 100% at most. The results showed that ESUL has better performance than the traditional U-turn design and could be implemented to reduce traffic congestion and the potential hazards caused by U-turn maneuvers.