Summary of Access Management Impacts: Access Point Density and Raised Medians (0-4221-S)

This research report describes the first year activities and preliminary findings of a two-year research study to investigate the impacts of access management treatments. The first objective of the research is to estimate the impacts of access management techniques through field data collection at selected sites in Texas and to perform simulation of traffic performance. Preliminary findings of one such case study are provided in this report. Further case studies will be investigated in the second year of this research. Simulation will also be performed in the second year of this research on theoretical scenarios. The theoretical scenarios are intended to assist TxDOT in alternatives analysis. Two additional case study locations will also be simulated in the second year of the study. The second objective of the research is to estimate the safety benefits of access management treatments by investigating crash data from select corridors where access management treatments have been installed. A key part of this analysis is the assessment of the crash information used in the analysis. This report includes preliminary analysis of crash analysis from one case study corridor, and researchers anticipate investigation of at least four additional case study locations in the second year of the research study.