A Holistic Intersection Rating System (HIRS)—A Novel Methodology to Measure the Holistic Operational Performance of Signalized Urban Intersections
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors in this paper proposed a rating system (named as HIRS) to appraise road intersections from the aspects of enabling technologies, physical and operational designs. In this study, they applied the RII method to quantize the HIRS features. For me, this topic is not very attractive, and there are also some issues should be addressed.
Major problem:
- The principle of the proposed HIRS is not very clear. What are the major features of the HIRS? How to conduct the HIRS to evaluate road intersections? And what is the difference between HIRS and the existing rating system?
- Many sentences are hard to read. Such as:
- HIRS rates signalized urban intersections based on …….to operate holistically and thus lead to a more human-centric and sustainable operational performance.
Why those intersections can be operated holistically based on the HIRS assessment results? I am very confused for this statement.
- HIRS features? What are the HIRS features?
- Signalized urban intersections, as key components or subsystems of urban transportation system, …
I think road intersections cannot be regarded as the subsystems of urban transportation system. It is only a part of vehicle road networks.
- However, less attention was given … such as pedestrians, cyclists, and nearby residents.
What is the difference between pedestrians, cyclists, and nearby residents? Why do you take nearby residents as a separate category?
- Problems of writing.
- The font of some sentences is too big. Such as:
“performance evaluation of signalized urban intersections under mixed traffic conditions”
The font of Figure 1 is also too big.
- There are a lot of long sentences which make it hard to read. Such as:
Evaluating and ranking the operations of those intersections with respect to their tended functionalities and the consequences of those functionalities on the surrounding community and the users of the intersection is a complex undertaking as multiple inter-related criteria must all be weighed in, considered, and given their due importance.
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Reviewer 2 Report
The authors' approach to the issues of junction assessment not only in terms of the satisfaction of traffic users (capacity), but also the communication functions, the environment, public health, community welfare and the local economy is very interesting. Often these functions are overlooked in projects.
The authors used the results of 20 observed intersections to evaluate their research. I personally lacked a detailed description of these intersections (geometry, traffic volume) to compare them with "european" examples. This would give information about the "transferability" of considerations.
Please pay attention to the numbering of the figures (Fig. 1 appears twice).
Author Response
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Reviewer 3 Report
Article is interesting and well designed.
Deeper literature review is needed.
Please, describe the methodology of your research in more detail (chapter 2.2).
Author Response
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Reviewer 4 Report
The authors present a very applied approach to evaluating road intersection performance on criteria of operations, sustainability, and innovation. While the authors clearly present what the HIRS system is about and how it differs from the existing performance guidebooks, the results are somewhat unsupported with the sufficient arguments on the development of HIRS. For me as a reader, it was clear what HIRS is, and it was clear what the results present for the transportation practitioners, but I could not find an explanation on how the authors approached to developing HIRS evaluation criteria. While the number of assessments that HIRS provides is quite high, I recommend to pick one or just a few assessment areas (for example AV readiness) and explain how you developed it. This will provide a better overview of your application. Otherwise, the literature review is good, and the introduction is very very clear.
Author Response
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Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
(1) The font of Figure 1 is too big, such as: Tool input, Tool, and outcome. Please revise it.
(2) Section 2.3: Does the last two paragraphes belong to the second paragraph? If not, please adjust the format.
Reviewer 4 Report
The authors have significantly improved the explanation of the signalized intersection sustainability evaluation tool HIRS presented in the article. The remaining issue from the previous version of the manuscript is that the authors present a sample of intersections with the final HIRS evaluation results, but do not include any details on various levels of HIRS analysis such as design, operations, sustainability, etc. Some additional results are provided in the appendix, however, it is not enough to guide the readers through how the process of HIRS results was conducted. There are quite a few contributing segments in this research, and I believe that the HIRS sounds as an innovative and useful tool for signalized intersections. It also definitely includes the types of assessment which are rarely used in the existing methods. However, the authors again do not show this and this has to be improved. The other sections in the manuscript are improved, and I would leave them as they are.
