• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.25 no.2 s.95
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• pp.17-26
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• 2007

Because the prime objective of the current preemption methods at signalized intersections near highway-railroad grade crossings(IHRGCs) is to clear the crossing, secondary objectives such as safe pedestrian crossing time and minimized delay often are given less consideration or are ignored completely during the preemption. Under certain circumstances state-of-the-practice traffic signal preemption strategies may cause serious pedestrian safety and efficiency problems at IHRGCs. An improved transition preemption strategy(ITPS) that is specifically designed to improve intersection performance while maintaining or improving the current level of safety was developed by Cho and Rilett. Even if the new transition preemption strategy improved both the safety and efficiency of IHRGCs, the performance of the strategy is affected by train speed. Understanding the impact of this factor is essential in order to implement ITPS. In this paper, the effects of train speed were analyzed using a VISSIM simulation model which was calibrated to field conditions. It was concluded that the delay is affected more by train speed than the transitional preemption strategy and the safety of the intersection is not affected by train speed once an advanced preemption warning time(APWT) is equal to or greater than 90 seconds.