Impacts of Lane Changes at Merge Bottlenecks: A Theory and Strategies to Maximize Capacity

Jorge Laval, Michael Cassidy and Carlos Daganzo
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Jorge Laval: Laboratoire Ingénierie Circulation Transport LICIT (INRETS/ENTPE)
Michael Cassidy: University of California, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Carlos Daganzo: University of California, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

A chapter in Traffic and Granular Flow’05, 2007, pp 577-586 from Springer

Abstract: Summary Recent empirical observations at freeway merge bottlenecks have revealed (i) a drop in the bottleneck discharge rate when queues form upstream, (ii) an increase in lane-changing maneuvers simultaneous with this “capacity drop”, and (iii) a reversal of the drop when the ramp is metered. This paper shows that a simple vehicle lane-changing theory, which has been shown to explain related phenomena at lane-drops and moving bottlenecks, also explains the new phenomena at merges. In this theory, lane-changing vehicles are modeled as discrete particles endowed with realistic accelerations, and are embedded in a multilane stream where each lane obeys the kinematic wave model. This theory is parsimonious: only one of its four parameters has to be calibrated by running the model. Our simulations show that the theory predicts surprisingly well the cumulative flows at all locations, the vehicle trip times, the number of lane-changing maneuvers, the capacity drop, its recovery upon metering, and the distribution of these measures across lanes and over time. Applications are discussed.

Keywords: Lane Change; Transportation Research Record; Kinematic Wave; October 15th; Capacity Drop (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-540-47641-2_56

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-47641-2_56

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