Abstract
High volume of traffic is loaded on urban highway during peak hours as well as the ramp connecting main road and auxiliary road of highway. Once the demand exceeds the capacity of the ramp, congestion may happen on both main road and the auxiliary road. To deal with this problem, an new urban highway ramp, switchable ramp (SR) that can switch between on and off condition, is proposed in this paper. A macroscopic time-space discrete model is built in this paper to model this process by dividing the studied time period into short time periods and the studied road segment into small sections. The impact of the type of ramp on upstream and downstream traffic flow is analyzed. A segment of urban highway in Chengdu, China, is used as a case study. The traffic flow data in peak hours is collected and used. Mathematical analysis proves that the SR system proposed in this paper can reduce the total travel time (TTT) in the studied area. Results show that the SR system is more useful when the traffic volume is high.
Highlights
New fixed ramps may cause unnecessary weaving of vehicles during non-peak hours according to the shortcomings of the fixed ramp mentioned above. erefore, it is necessary to design a type of switchable ramp (SR), which can switch condition according to the actual traffic condition
When traffic demand increases by 5%, the total travel time (TTT) of highway system can be reduced from 157.289 hours to 150.262 hours, with a reduction of 4.468%
If we only compare the reduction of TTT during the opening period of SR, the reduction rate of TTT under the surveyed traffic flow is 6.416%, and the reduction rate of TTT when traffic flow increases by 5% is 9.526%. e increase in traffic flow leads to more significant effects
Summary
High volume of traffic is loaded on urban highway during peak hours as well as the ramp connecting main road and auxiliary road of highway. Once the demand exceeds the capacity of the ramp, congestion may happen on both main road and the auxiliary road. To deal with this problem, an new urban highway ramp, switchable ramp (SR) that can switch between on and off condition, is proposed in this paper. Controlling the traffic entering main road through the on-ramp can improve the capacity of merging area [2, 3].
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