Improved Business Driveway Delineation in Urban Work Zones

This report documents the efforts and results of a two-year research project aimed at improving driveway delineation in work zones. The first year of the project included a closed-course study to identify the most promising driveway delineation alternatives for further study. In the second year of the research project, the researchers performed a human factors study of alternative business driveway channelizing treatments in real work zones. The purpose of the research was to determine the effectiveness of alternative business driveway channelizing treatments over standard drum treatments. The alternative treatments included combinations of 18-inch tall low-profile longitudinal channelizing devices and 42-inch tall cones (i.e., grabber cones). Using paid participants who drove a instrumented vehicles, the researchers used driver eye-tracking equipment to compare differences in drivers’ visual attention while approaching business driveways with the various channelization treatments deployed. Other measures of effectiveness (MOEs) considered were detection distance, percentage of missed driveways, driver perception/recall of treatments, and driver preferences. While differences in the MOE were less pronounced during the day, the alternative channelizing treatments generally performed better than the standard drum treatment at night.