Webinar Recording: Development of an Effective Truck Route Signage Program for the City of Tampa

June 6, 2019, 12:00PM (ET)

Development of an Effective Truck Route Signage Program for the City of Tampa

The City of Tampa, Florida, contains numerous major freight generators and destinations, including two seaports, a rail intermodal yard, the cargo-capable Tampa International Airport, and a wide variety of logistics activity centers. Effective and efficient transportation of commercial vehicles has become essential to the economy of Tampa Bay area. However, several communities in the Tampa Bay area have complained about the danger and noise of commercial trucks passing through their neighborhoods and not complying with existing truck route signage. To improve the safety, health, and quality of life in residential and/or non-truck route communities and improve the efficiency and mobility of commercial vehicles, compliance of commercial truck drivers with truck route signage at intersections is vital.

Traditionally, negative truck route signage has been used at intersections to prohibit commercial trucks from entering a specific roadway. In many cases, commercial truck drivers are unable to change lanes at the intersection to avoid entering a non-truck route because they did not see positive truck route signage to guide them in advance. An effective truck route signage program based on combined positive and negative truck route signage was developed for the City of Tampa via a successful pilot implementation. This pilot implementation demonstrated positive use of the roadway network, guided commercial truck drivers to drive on the designated truck route system, and significantly increased their compliance with the truck route signage.

In the pilot study, the CUTR project team conducted a detailed literature review to establish standards for sign types, sizes and locations for both positive and negative truck route signs and proposed locations for a pilot implementation. Based on truck route violations and complaints from communities, 8 study intersections with a total of 10 legs were selected for pilot implementation of proposed truck route signage, before-after data collection, and evaluation on the effectiveness of the proposed truck route signage. The quantitative analysis showed that there was an overall 56 percent reduction in the total number of commercial trucks using non-truck routes after the implementation of the combined positive and negative truck route signage at the 8 study sites. Specifically, it included 52 percent reduction in single-unit trucks, 69 percent reduction in tractor and semi-trailer combination trucks, and 96 percent reduction in tractor and multi-trailer combination trucks. The statistical analysis indicated that these reductions are statistically significant at a 99% confidence level. This pilot study concluded that the implementation of combined positive and negative truck route signage could significantly increase commercial truck driver compliance with truck route signage to improve roadway safety and quality of life. Download Handout

Presenter: Pei-Sung Lin, Ph.D., P.E., PTOE, FITE, Program Director, ITS, Traffic Operations and Safety, Center for Urban Transportation Research

Dr. Pei-Sung Lin is Director of the ITS, Traffic Operations and Safety Program at the Center for Urban Transportation Research (CUTR) at the University of South Florida. Dr. Lin is also the Director of Florida Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP) Center. He earned his master’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1991 and doctoral degree from the University of Florida in 1995. He is a registered Professional Engineer (P.E.) in Florida and a certified Professional Traffic Operations Engineer (PTOE) by the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE). Dr. Lin is an ITE fellow. He has 26 years of work and research experience in transportation, specializing in traffic signal systems, traffic engineering and operations, pedestrian and bicycle safety, wrong-way driving prevention, crash analysis, intelligent transportation systems, and automated vehicles. Dr. Lin has conducted more 120 research projects and grants, published and presented numerous technical papers at national and international conferences and meetings. Dr. Lin served as chair of the ITE Intelligent Traffic Signal Operations Committee from 2005 to 2015. He also served as President of the International Chinese Transportation Professionals Association from 2013 to 2015. Dr. Lin was the recipient of prestigious ITE Edward A. Mueller – District 10 Transportation Engineer of the Year award in 2017.