A Proposed Analytical Technique for the Design and Analysis of Major Freeway Weaving Sections

Weaving occurs when merging traffic streams entering a freeway from an on-ramp cross over diverging traffic streams exiting the freeway via a nearby off-ramp. The intense lane-changing activity which typically occurs in weaving areas can create significant operational problems. Thus, weaving sections often represent bottleneck locations in urban freeway systems. The prevalence of weaving areas on U.S. freeways warrants the need for analytical techniques which can reliably analyze and/or design these critical freeway components. However, previous research at the Institute of Transportation Studies suggested that existing analytical procedures do not accurately predict weaving operation and/or geometric design requirements.