Analysis of construction area’s impacts on traffic flow: A case study on Hangzhou Bay Bridge in China

Abstract

Modeling impacts of the construction area on the mixed traffic flow would be a challenge. It needs to figure out the traffic regulations near the construction area, which vehicles must comply with. Meanwhile it requires depicting the different driving behaviors of cars and trucks when they run into the construction area. To deal with these problems, we present a three-lane cellular automaton traffic model with a construction area, taking the traffic flow on Hangzhou Bay Bridge with the third lane closed as a case study. The different longitudinal position updating rules and the lateral lane-changing rules are proposed for cars and trucks respectively, which are driven by aggressive drivers and cautious drivers. The simulation results show that the traffic flow will reach the maximum value when the length of the work zone, i.e., the main part of the construction area, is appropriate. On the other hand, the construction area has a great negative impact on the traffic flow when the injection rate is high, and cause the serious traffic congestions. In order to optimize the traffic flow, the variation tendency of the total traffic flow and the delay time with the increasing length of the work zone and the injection rate are analyzed. And the recommended values of the work zone’s length under different injection rates are obtained. In addition, according to the variation trend of the merging rate with the increasing length of the merging area and the injection rate, the recommended values of the merging area’s length under different injection rate are obtained. The results are meaningful and expected to be applied in the traffic management during the period of highway construction.