Quantifying Access Management on Arterial Roadways

Research suggests that successfully implemented access management programs can reduce delay, increase capacity, and improve safety performance on single roadway segments and across larger roadway networks. However, quantifying how access management, as a single entity, might affect a transportation system is difficult because countless combinations of strategies can be implemented. Consequently, large-scale access management decisions are often based on subjective assessments and the engineering judgment of practitioners and decision makers. There is a need for a standard, objective, and quantifiable approach to evaluating the impacts and performance of large-scale access management applications. This paper presents a quantitative method for evaluating an access management project on factors including operations; safety; impacts to adjacent land uses; and bicycle, pedestrian, and transit facilities. The result is an access management rating (AMR), a numerical value that allows for straightforward comparisons between corridors or between design alternatives on the same corridor. The proposed methodology eliminates the subjective component of the decision-making process while maintaining enough flexibility to be tailored to a specific agency’s needs and priorities. By improving the consistency of access management evaluations, the decision-making process will be streamlined, funding will be allocated to projects with the greatest needs and opportunities for improvement, and the entire transportation industry will benefit from improved safety, operations, and land use development.