Citation

Chang GL, Zhu Z. J. Adv. Transp. 2006; 40(3): 265-287.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2006, Institute for Transportation, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This paper focuses on two critical but neglected issues that are imperative for the design of effective control strategies for highway segments undergoing lane closure operations. The first issue is the impact of mandatory lane changes from the blocked lanes on the temporal and spatial evolution of traffic properties at the lane-closure highway bottleneck. The second issue is the interrelation between the critical density and its approaching traffic flow volume as well as characteristics under various types of lane-closure operations. A macroscopic multilane model is used for analyzing the dynamic traffic properties of the highway segment under a lane-closure operation. The proposed traffic flow formulations employ the hyperbolic model used in the non-Newtonian fluid dynamics, and assume the lane-changing intensity between neighboring lanes as a function of their difference in density. The results of extensive simulation experiments indicate that the proposed model is capable of realistically replicating the impacts of lane-changing maneuvers from the blocked lanes on the overall traffic conditions, including the interrelations between the approaching flow density, the resulting congestion level, and the exiting flow rate from the lane-closure zone. Extensive experimental analyses also confirm that traffic conditions will deteriorate dramatically and evolve to the state of traffic jam if the density has exceeded its critical level that varies with the type of lane-closure operations. This study provides a convenient way for computing such a critical density under various lane-closure conditions. It also offers a theoretical basis for understanding the formation and dissipation of traffic jams. Future extensions of the model are discussed.