Recurrence Theory–Based Platoon Analysis under Indian Traffic Conditions

The phenomenon of platoon dispersion deals with the spreading out of groups of vehicles discharged together from a signal (platoon) as they move along the roadway during normal traffic operations. Understanding and analyzing this behavior is important in efficient traffic operations and management. There are different platoon dispersion models reported in the literature, out of which Robertson’s model is one of the oldest and widely used. However, all the existing studies were from homogeneous and lane-based traffic conditions and few studies studied platoon dispersion behavior under traffic conditions such as those existing in India. In this study, data were collected in a typical Indian urban arterial road. To account for the heterogeneous and laneless Indian traffic, Roberston’s model was modified and an optimization approach was used to obtain the coefficients. The proposed model’s performance was evaluated and compared with the original Robertson’s model after calibrating for the specific traffic conditions under consideration. Platoon parameters were also estimated using both proposed and calibrated models and the results were compared, which showed a better performance of the proposed model compared to the calibrated Robertson’s model. Though the proposed model was tested for heterogeneous and laneless traffic data, it is in no way constraining and is generic enough to be applied for other traffic conditions.