State of the Practice in Highway Access Management

FHWA Medians and Pedestrians Brochure

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) strongly encourages the use of raised medians (or refuge areas) in curbed sections of multi-lane roadways in urban and suburban areas, particularly in areas where there are mixtures of a significant number of pedestrians, high volumes of traffic (more than 12,000 vehicles per day) and intermediate or high travel speeds. This document expands on the FHWA guidance memo detailed here: http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/memo071008/Hardcopies can be ordered here.

Last Modified Date: 12/20/2010
More info at: http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/ped_bike/tools_solve/

Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2171 contains eight papers that explore acceleration and deceleration zones at traffic control intersections, using Global Positioning System data to model operating speed and deceleration on two-lane rural roads, interchange treatments to preserve service life of narrow overpass and underpass roadways, parallel flow intersection and displaced left-turn intersection designs, offset improvements for left-turn lanes, public transit provisions in a state highway access management code, safety impacts of access management features in the Las Vegas, Nevada, Valley, and access management at major arterial intersections. Each article can be ordered for $25.00

Last Modified Date: 12/ 01/2010

Link to documents

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 659: Guide for the Geometric Design of Driveways explores guidelines related to the geometric design of driveways. The report includes driveway-related terms and definitions, and examination of basic geometric controls, a summary of access spacing principles, and detailed discussions of various geometric design elements.

Material related to and supporting the contents of NCHRP Report 659, including an extensive review of literature, has been published as NCHRP Web-Only Document 151: Geometric Design of Driveways.

Last Modified Date: 8/9/2010

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 661: A Guidebook for Corridor-Based Statewide Transportation Planning explores a template for corridor planning designed to help states to better understand the implications of transportation decisions on mobility, communities, economic development, and environmental stewardship.

Last Modified Date: 7/17/2010

This study attempts to capture the economic climate along the corridor both before and after conversion to a freeway. A variety of macro and micro level indicators were used to take snapshots of the corridor’s economic health both before and after freeway conversion.

Click here to view .pdf report (June 2007)

Transportation Research Board's Access Management Manual provides technical information on access management techniques, together with information on how access management programs can be effectively developed and administered. It presents access management comprehensively, in an effort to integrate planning and engineering practices with the transportation and land use decisions that contribute to access outcomes.

Click here for more information about the TRB Access Management Manual.

Animation describing Access Management Principles

Download the animation from this home page to use in your Powerpoint Presentation! The stand-alone executable file can be also run as a separate program.

Median Intersection Design for Rural High-Speed Divided Highways
5/18/2010 TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 650: describes common safety issues at median intersections on rural divided
highways and presents innovative geometric and operational treatments for addressing those issues. Ten case studies illustrate how they have been applied in the field.

VIEW THE DOCUMENT NCHRP Report 650

A Guidebook for Including Access Management in Transportation Planning 12/23/2005 TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 548: A Guidebook for Including Access Management in Transportation Planning offers guidance for implementing access management through the transportation planning process.

VIEW THE DOCUMENT NCHRP Report 548

Access Rights
11/30/2005 TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 351 examines issues involved in acquiring access rights along roadways other than freeways. The report documents the state of the practice with the intent to limit the amount of access to the roadway for the purpose of managing highway safety and mobility. The report documents successful practices and current policies, legal and real estate literature, and other publications that address this subject.

VIEW THE DOCUMENT NCHRP Report 351

The Access Management DVD Library contains a wealth of access management documents and resources. Proceedings are included from each national access management conference, as well as the leading handbooks from around the country.

You may obtain free copies of the DVD Library by contacting Neil Spiller at Neil.Spiller@fhwa.dot.gov or for more information about the disc, please contact Frank Broen at fbroen@teachamerica.com.

Click here to view Video Tour of the 2004 DVD.

NCHRP Reports and Synthesis documents about access management