An Assessment of Frontage Road Yield Treatment Effectiveness: Summary Report (0-4986-S)

This project summary report summarizes the research performed in Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) Project 0-4986. The goal of this research project was to assess the effectiveness of the wide variety of frontage road exit ramp and U-turn yield treatments that exist in Texas, identify those that exhibited the best operations and safety, and develop enhanced guidance for future deployment and management of these parts of the freeway network. The research team collected field data at a number of sites around Texas representative of current yield treatments in practice. They also developed a calibrated model and applied different yielding treatments to each calibrated site. Due to the large volume of results obtained, researchers developed a database software program, the Frontage Road Yield Treatment Analysis Tool (FRYTAT). FRYTAT will provide TxDOT with an easy-to-use tool to provide fairly quick answers in the selection of appropriate yield treatments. Researchers found that the best-performing treatments were Category 1A (exit ramp has own lane, no double/single solid line, no YIELD sign) and Category 2 (frontage road drops lane prior to exit ramp gore, exit ramp has own lane, double/single solid line, no YIELD sign). Researchers also recommend retrofitting the worst-performing treatments.