Reference no: EM132531211

CIVL 0011 Highway and Transport Engineering - Middle East College

Learning Outcome 1: Discuss methods of transport planning process and highway planning strategies.

Learning Outcome 2: Evaluate the principles of highway alignment, and carry out geometric design and intersection designs, including environmental aspects.

Assignment Objective

Introduction:
The road network of any city is its lifeline and the evaluation of their performance is very necessary for future traffic planning, design, operation and maintenance. Traffic congestion is the common problem of most urban area in Oman; most of the roads are congested.

The following project should be solved individually. In the project, students will have hands-on experience in discussing methods of transport planning process, evaluate methods of analysis of highway traffic and signalized intersections, and carry out geometric design and intersection designs.

Data:
Each student will have his own data that is given in the attached "CourseWork Project-Data" Excel sheet.

Assignment Tasks

Every student is required to prepare a conceptual design for geometric design rural collector highway15 Km with three interchange between Muscat and Nizwa and signalized intersection designs, including environmental aspects. You are required to discuss the following

Part 1:The highway design

a. Describe the steps that an engineer should follow if he or she were asked to determine the need for design a new highway to replace the current one.
b. Discuss the factors influencing highway design
c. Provide a design of the highway, the design should include Minimum design speed, Recommended lane width and Preferable shoulder width, Right of Way, Maximum grade, and the minimum length of a crest vertical curve and sage vertical curve
d. Design the Submit highway plan on an A3 sheet to an identified drawing scale, labelled with alignment curvature, and required types of sign on the road (warning sign, direction sign, speed limits etc...) and sign locations
e. Provide a summary report describing your route alignment and its major features. Give your reasons for selection of your highway features (maximum 500 words).
To determine the ADT on the road, the data was collected as shown below on a Tuesday during the following. Consider If the traffic is expected to be 180% from the current traffic up to May 2030,

Table 1: Traffic volume at specific time

Table 2: Grades for the curve

Consider the following for the sage vertical curve criteria :(a) Stopping sight distance,(b) Comfort
(c) General appearance

Part 2: The Intersection design

a. Describe the different principles involved in the design of at-grade intersections and the different types of at-grade intersections. Also, give an example of an appropriate location for the use of each type.

b. Design a suitable signal phasing system and phase lengths for the intersection using the Webster method. Show a detailed layout of the phasing system and the intersection geometry used for the geometric and traffic characteristics shown below. If. Discuss the effect of increasing of saturation flow rates by 10% higher on the cycle length?

Table 3:The geometric and traffic characteristics of the intersection

Assume the following saturation flows:

Table 4: The saturation flow of the intersection

c. A two-phase signal system is installed at an unsignalized T intersection with channelized left-turn lanes and shared through and right-turn lanes. Using a suitable diagram, determine the possible conflict points. Indicate the phasing system used.

Part 3:Project Evaluation
a. You have been asked to evaluate transportation alternatives. Explain the basic criteria that you would use in carrying out this Part and What units are used for measurement?
b. The Department of Traffic is considering three improvement plans for a heavily traveled intersection within the city. The intersection improvement is expected to achieve three goals: improve travel speeds, increase safety, and reduce operating expenses for motorists. The annual dollar value of savings compared with existing conditions for each criterion as well as additional construction and maintenance costs is shown in Table 13.4. If the economic life of the road is considered to be.

Table 5: Cost and Benefits for Improvement Plans with Respect to Existing Conditions

c. You have been hired as a consultant to a medium-sized city to develop and implement a procedure for evaluating three alternatives to replace an existing two-lane highway with a four-lane highway that will meet current design standards are proposed. The selected alternative will provide a more direct route between two towns that are 12.0 km apart along the existing highway. With each alternative operating speeds are expected to be at or near the design of 60 km per hour. The following scoring method, developed by the transportation oversight board, is to be used.

Table 6: Ranking and Weights for Each Objective

The following information has been estimated for each alternative by the planning staff:

Table 7: Estimated Values for Measures of Effectiveness

d. Write a short report for a comparative evaluation of the impacts of the project on Social and Natural System.

Attachment:- Highway and Transport Engineering.rar