Author(s)

F. Nicoli, A. Pratelli, R. Akçelik

Abstract

This paper deals with the study of a road corridor in the historical city of Lucca (Tuscany, Italy) following the transfer of the city hospital to a new location, which took place in May 2014. Lucca is surrounded by a ring road and the road corridor study was related to alleviating the problems actually experienced by ambulances travelling from the urban ring road to the new hospital. The corridor road length is about 1.5 km (i.e. 0.93 miles), and there are seven different intersections along the corridor, spanning from signalized to two-way stop controlled and roundabouts. SIDRA INTERSECTION 6.0 (NETWORK version) was used to analyze the two scenarios; namely, the “present situation” and the “design situation” to verify the effectiveness of some proposed local changes and intersection improvements. The analyses indicated that “Level of Service D” (the target value required in the urban field) could be achieved for the “design situation” while “Level of Service F” was indicated for the “present situation”. The analysis results strongly supported the design proposal of improving the west road corridor for accessing the new hospital of Lucca. This is particularly important considering that ambulances are the most crucial users of the road corridor. The analyses also showed that significant improvements could be made to traffic performance in the road corridor in general, including environmental benefits in terms of reduced fuel consumption and emissions. This study has been possible thanks to SIDRA INTERSECTION 6.0 (NETWORK version) that showed its capability of modelling both single intersections and the road corridor.

Keywords

road corridor evaluation, SIDRA INTERSECTION 6.0 software, roundabout analysis, network analysis and comparison