Planning and designing highways are an important process, because the design of the highway plays a large role in the safety and reliability of the system. Highway designers have to take into consideration the views of various communities along the route, including land use, building limitations, traffic patterns, and noise levels. New roads that are constructed should not only be safe and functional, but also aesthetically pleasing and superelevated as well. Superelevation is a recent highway design technology that uses elevations to change the look of roads from both the road user’s and the environment’s perspective.
Why need Superelevation Used in Freeways and Other Mainways?
An example of superelevation technology is the highway design known as “stadium seating”. When planning a new highway or improving an existing one, this technology is used. The stadium seating technique works by creating a “high-visibility” bowl that sits higher than other areas of the highway to give drivers a more conspicuous vision of the road ahead. The high-visibility feature creates a greater sense of urgency while driving through traffic because you can see two or more lanes ahead. This helps prevent drivers from pulling off the highway to avoid hitting people in the seating area. Unfortunately, the increased visibility can also create new safety problems, especially at night.
One of the most common problems caused by lane width is when two adjacent lanes are split apart by a low line of visibility. This is especially common in metropolitan cities where multiple lanes of travel are usually divided by a low line of glass. In order to remedy this problem, the designers sometimes add a raised median or add a turn lane as another option for narrow lanes.
