Study On Work Zone Temporary Traffic Control Devices Setting At Night During Highway Reconstruction

In recent years, with the vehicle numbers continue to rise in China, the traffic volume that the expressway system undertakes continues to escalate, resulting in more and more expressways need reconstruction urgently. Most expressways’ reconstruction is not closed to traffic, with the vehicles transiting and construction at the same time. Because the traffic volume is low during nighttime, and the interference by construction is relatively small, many projects choose to construct at night. However, lacking of clear and reasonable technical guidance documents to temporary traffic control devices setting at night during highway reconstruction will bring threats to the constructors and the approaching vehicles. Therefore, studying on work zone temporary traffic control devices setting at night during highway reconstruction has great significance and practical application for improving the traffic safety and order of nighttime work zone.As a theme of the “Highway Reconstruction Traffic Organization Design Specification”, this paper first analyzes the driving influences through work zone brought by psychological and physiological level under nighttime condition, from the vision features, response features, operation features and psychological features during nighttime. According to the reconstruction work zone’s environment features and traffic features at nighttime, this paper summarizes the factors that affect the safety of highway reconstruction work zones at nighttime, and systematically describes the kinds, types and relevant technical requirements of temporary traffic control devices. Depending on the different features of mobile work zone and fixed work zone, this paper studies and makes requests for the settings of temporary traffic control devices at nighttime under each case. The results above provide technical assistance and theoretical support for the relevant provisions’ compilation of “Highway Reconstruction Traffic Organization Design Specification”.