Impact and Implementation of Reserved Lanes for Automated Driving on Signalized Urban Arterials

TL;DR

This study evaluates the impact of reserved lanes for automated vehicles on urban arterials, showing significant travel time reductions through microsimulation, with implications for improving traffic mobility.

Contribution

It introduces lane reservation scenarios for automated vehicles on signalized urban arterials and assesses their impact using microsimulation, providing new insights into traffic efficiency improvements.

Findings

Travel time reductions of 5.1% to 19.4% depending on market penetration.

Significant mobility improvements with designated automated vehicle lanes.

Simulation results support lane reservation as a viable traffic management strategy.

Abstract

An automated vehicle refers to a vehicle that can achieve a safe movement on a roadway facility without the influence of a human driver. With emerging trend of the connected vehicle concept over the past decade, numerous state-of-the-art applications focusing on automated vehicle-based intersection control have been proposed. The main purpose of this study is to estimate and evaluate impact of designated lanes for automated vehicles and recommend some viable lane configuration scenarios for signalized urban arterials. The automated driving was simulated in PTV Vissim using trajectory-driven control strategy. The concept evaluation through microsimulation reveals significant mobility improvements compared to operational scenario without lane reservation. Findings imply that for signalized corridors observed in this study, total travel time reductions are ranging from 5.1% to 19.4% depending on C/AV market penetration, and test-bed configuration parameters.