Traffic Engineering, Transportation Infrastructure Design

The assignment was carried out for Alberta Transportation by Invistec’s Transportation Team members while they were with Traffic Solutions Consulting Ltd. The goal of this project was to alleviate extreme congestion (20 km queue) which occurred daily on Highway 63 during the evening peak traffic returning to Fort McMurray from the oil sand sites north of the city. After the recommended changes were implemented, the evening southbound queues were reduced to 1 km of moving queue.
Congestion Alleviation Strategies included: (1) examined traffic spikes from various traffic generators; (2) examined the capacity limitations due to intersection geometry limitations; (3) prepared four timing plans and 30 action plans tailored-made to address each and every traffic spikes; (4) allowed timing plan switching as frequently as every 15 or 30 minutes; (5) utilized extremely long split timings to clear the queues for the most congested traffic movements; (6) allowed phase re-reservice to achieve maximum signal operational flexibility.