Evaluating the effect of main factors in determining speed bump location based on Taguchi design of experiments

Abstract

Use of speed bumps as a traffic-calming technique is a key issue to a safe and smooth traffic flow. Lack of consideration on finding the best location for speed bump installation before stop points, such as traffic junctions, has provided the motivation to conduct this study. This paper investigates the influence of some main factors on determining bump location and to optimize the distance from bump to stop point in order to obtain the minimum speed at this point. A robust design was used whereby the effect of environmental noises on the parameters was investigated using the Taguchi design of experiments. A 2-level L8 inner array and an L4 outer array design is used to evaluate and analyze the results. The results suggested that the linear models effectively explain the performance indicators within the ranges of the factors. It can be concluded that the optimum setting suggested is at the most influential levels of the design parameters which yields a robust and insensitive design for speed bump installation after considering the effect of environmental noises. The car speed before bump has the greatest influence and also the most robust factor in terms of signal-to-noise ratio and mean analysis.