Capacity drops at merges

Capacity drops at merges: Analytical expressions for multilane freeways

Leclercq, L. (TU Delft Transport and Planning; Université de Lyon)
Knoop, V.L. (TU Delft Transport and Planning)
Marczak, F (Université de Lyon)
Hoogendoorn, S.P. (TU Delft Transport and Planning)

2016

This paper deals with the derivation of analytical formulae to estimate the effective capacity at freeway merges in a multilane context. It extends two previous papers that are based on the same modeling framework but that are restricted to a single lane on the freeway (or to the analysis of the right lane only). The analytical expression for the one-lane capacity is recursively applied for all lanes. Lane-changing maneuvers (mandatory for the on-ramp vehicles and discretionary for others) are divided into two non-overlapping local merging areas. Discretionary lane-changes are transformed into a lane-changing flow using an appropriate analytical formula. This defines a system of equations whose unknowns are the capacity on all lanes and the inserting flow coming from the on-ramp. A sensitivity analysis shows that vehicle acceleration and the truck ratio are the most influential parameters for the total capacity. The analytical formulae are proven to match with numerical results from a traffic simulator that fully describes vehicle dynamics. Finally, they provide very good estimates when compared to experimental data for an active merge on the M6 freeway in UK.

Freeways
Highway capacity
Lane changing
Mathematical analysis
Merging area
Multilane highways
Sensitivity analysis
traffic flow

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:e142cd70-eded-430a-ae91-f415e889ab0c

https://doi.org/10.3141/2560-01

Transportation Research Board (TRB)

2023-03-06

Transportation Research Board 95th annual meeting: Washington, United States, 2560

Transportation Research Board 95th annual meeting, 2016-01-10 → 2016-01-14, Washington, United States

Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.

Institutional Repository

conference paper

© 2016 L. Leclercq, V.L. Knoop, F Marczak, S.P. Hoogendoorn