The Province of Alberta constructs new highways and widens existing roadways relying responding to demand. Absent from these improvements, however, are other capacity expansion and demand management strategies such as high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes and ramp metering-strategies that exist on other Canadian urban highways. Since HOV lanes and ramp metering have not been implemented and a process for planning and analysis is absent in Alberta Transportation's engineering guidelines, I develop

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... framework, guiding the planning and engineering process to study the viability and design of these strategies at differing levels of detail. I develop this framework through first conducting a literature review, providing a background on HOV lanes, ramp metering, and commonly used traffic analysis tools. HOV lanes shift travel to higher-density modes while ramp meters maintain free-flow conditions on a highway. Guidelines are then established for conducting a high-level, mid-level and detailed study in order to test various design scenarios. With these outlined studies, I apply this framework as a case study to Hwy 2 (HOV lanes) and Hwy 216 (ramp metering), to examine the location-specific data needs and study requirements. Through this thesis, I develop a planning framework which allows analysts to test the operational impacts of various design configurations and travel demand management (TDM) policies such as occupancy restrictions on HOV lanes and signal control systems for ramp meters. This connects the existing literature for design guidelines and operational studies, highlighting how various elements of design may be tested at each level of analysis. I also examine data availability for Developing HOV Lane and Ramp Meter Analysis Frameworks for Alberta Highways iii conducting these analyses, identifying occupancy data and model calibration data as the most significant needs. The framework developed by this thesis provides a foundation for engineers and transportation planners, by organizing the steps of analysis and helping identify data needs. Although many highway engineering projects follow a similar process, this framework is specifically applied to Alberta and Alberta Transportation's planning process. Developing HOV Lane and Ramp Meter Analysis Frameworks for Alberta Highways iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS