Traffic-Aware Lane Change Advance Warning System for Delay Reduction at Congested Freeway Diverge Areas
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 147, Issue 9
Abstract
This paper presents an on-board advance warning system based on a probabilistic prediction model that advises vehicles approaching a freeway diverge area on when to change lanes to reach an off-ramp, with the goal of reducing delay caused by congestion at the diverge area. The prediction model estimates the probability of reaching a goal state on the road using one or multiple lane changes. This estimate is based on several traffic- and driver-related parameters such as the distribution of intervehicle headway distances and lane-changing maneuver duration. For an upcoming off-ramp, the advance warning system utilizes the prediction model to continuously calculate the probability of reaching that off-ramp and advises vehicles to change lanes when the probability drops below a certain threshold. To evaluate the impact of the proposed system on reducing traffic delay at congested freeway diverge areas, it was used in a simulation case study of a two-lane segment of the I-66 interstate highway to advise vehicles taking an off-ramp on when to change lanes. The results indicate that incorporating the proposed system can reduce the average delay by up to 83%—effectively wiping out the congestion in some cases—depending on traffic flow and the ratio of vehicles taking the off-ramp.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. This includes MATLAB codes for the probability model and VISSIM simulation files, which include the main simulation files, EDM codes, DLL files, simulation output files, and MATLAB codes used for data aggregation and analysis.
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to express their gratitude to Dr. Harpreet S. Dhillon for his help with the probability model and to Dr. Montasir Abbas and Awad Abdelhalim for their help with VISSIM simulations.
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Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 147 • Issue 9 • September 2021
Copyright
© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Dec 12, 2020
Accepted: Apr 5, 2021
Published online: Jul 14, 2021
Published in print: Sep 1, 2021
Discussion open until: Dec 14, 2021
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