High concentrations of fine particles are increasingly being detected due to inflows from abroad and local emission sources in Korea. As most people spend about 90% of their time indoors, the use of indoor air cleaners has grown significantly as they are now thought to be essential items. In this study, the noise, power consumption, and clean air delivery rate (CADR) of commercial air cleaners were analyzed according to the structural shape of the air cleaners. Analyses were performed based on the experimental results of 249 cases for air cleaners certified by Korea Air Cleaning Association. The air cleaners with front inlet and upper outlet air flow direction, which currently account for the highest market share, were found to have the highest noise per CADR (dB(A)/(m3/min)). On the other hand, the air cleaners with the inlet and outlet air flow in the same horizontal direction were found to have lowest noise per CADR than other structures.

PURPOSES : In this paper, pedestrian-oriented time assured traffic operation (POTATO), adopted in Korea at a single crossing pedestrianoriented operating area, is explored and applied to a simulation experiment and test site to verify the operation efficiency. METHODS : Three candidate plans are presented as a method to operate pedestrian-oriented signal operations that can overcome the restrictions on signal controllers in Korea. The selected POTATO and TOD signal operations were compared and analyzed. The delay and pedestrian queues, present length, and number of times were used as comparative indices. RESULTS : Scenario-specific simulations confirmed that the delay, compared to TOD signal operation, was reduced by up to 5 s/ped depending on the vehicle traffic volume and the number of pedestrians. For the vehicle delay, the results increased up to 8.99 s/veh, depending on the traffic volume of the vehicles and pedestrians. As a result of the test site operation, POTATO operation improved by 5.12 s/ped (approximately 46.69% improvement) compared to TOD operation in the hours commuting to school and by 2.84 s/ped in the hours commuting from school (approximately 51.13% improvement). In case of vehicle delay, the delay increased by 2.35 s/veh (approximately 64.39%) in the hours commuting to school and 1.20 s/veh (approximately 21.11%) in the hours commuting from school compared to the TOD operation. CONCLUSIONS : Through simulations and test site pilot operation verifications, the effects of pedestrian delay improvement were more positive if POTATO proposed in this study was low in vehicle traffic.

PURPOSES : This paper is to deliver an engineering design guide currently unavailable that highway engineers can refer to when they need to determine the safe distance between the starting point of the underground highway in a metropolitan area and the access points of the adjacent highway. METHODS : The distance between two different highway points should be sufficiently far to support the number of lane changes that drivers may take comfortably at the cruising speed in critical traffic conditions. RESULTS : The proper distance for the selected case study is calculated to be 160 and 200 m at the cruising speeds of 40 km/h and 50 km/h, respectively, without significant increase in potential conflicts estimated by the combination of the VISSIM and SSAM analysis. CONCLUSIONS : The proposed design method can be referred in urban metropolitan areas where no specific design guide is yet available, and it would prevent the unnecessary increase in construction costs and encourage private-public partnership highway businesses.