Abstract
This paper presents a novel approach to improve traffic throughput near diverge and weave bottlenecks in mixed traffic with human-driven vehicles (HDVs) and connected automated vehicles (CAVs). This is done by the strategic assignment of CAVs across lanes. The main principle is to induce strategic and necessary lane changes (LCs) (by CAVs and HDVs) well upstream of the potential bottleneck, so that the traffic flow approaching the bottleneck is organized and exhibits fewer throughput-reducing LCs at the bottleneck. A hybrid approach is used to investigate the problem: macroscopic analytical approach to formulate lane assignment strategies, and numerical simulations to quantify the improvements in throughput for various scenarios. Several strategies are formulated considering various operational conditions for each bottleneck type. Furthermore, compensatory behaviour of HDVs in response to the flow/density imbalance created by the CAV lane assignment is explicitly accounted for in our framework. Evaluation by numerical simulations demonstrates significant benefits of the proposed method, even at low to moderate CAV penetration rates: they can lead to an increase of throughput by several percent, thereby decreasing delays significantly.
Highlights
Congestion at recurrent motorway bottlenecks such as diverges and weaves can lead to lower throughput and increased travel times and is a source of major discomfort for road users
Since no exit human-driven vehicles (HDVs) were involved in the compensation, the number of lane changes (LCs) occurring in the capacity impact zone would be equal to the number of LCs performed by the exit HDVs remaining in the left lanes which is given by λC ∑ n− 1
This paper presented a novel traffic control approach of strategic connected automated ve hicles (CAVs) lane assignment to improve mixed traffic throughputs at diverge and weave bottlenecks
Summary
Congestion at recurrent motorway bottlenecks such as diverges and weaves can lead to lower throughput and increased travel times and is a source of major discomfort for road users. The state-of-the-art in traffic flow theory present a major gap and an opportunity to develop concepts and matching traffic control strategies that can improve mixed traffic flow by directly addressing the LC mechanism causing the throughput loss at bottlenecks To this end, this paper aims to formulate a control concept, utilizing CAV technologies, to mitigate throughput-reducing LCs (by HDVs and CAVs) at motorway bottlenecks. The main contribution of this paper is three-fold: (1) it proposes a control concept that directly addresses the void creation mechanism by LCs, based on decades of scientific research in this realm, with the aim to increase bottleneck throughput; (2) it presents a rigorous analytical formulation of the method providing important insights and is theoretically grounded; and (3) it deals with multi-lane mixed traffic under arbitrary penetration rate of CAVs, incorporating HDV behaviour, which is rarely seen in the literature.
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