Date on Master's Thesis/Doctoral Dissertation

8-2017

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Degree Name

M.S.

Department

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Degree Program

Civil Engineering, MS

Committee Chair

Li, Zhixia (Richard)

Committee Co-Chair (if applicable)

Sun, Zhihui

Committee Member

Sun, Zhihui

Committee Member

McNeil, Jacqueline

Author's Keywords

connected vehicles; work zone; late merge; lane-changing

Abstract

Typical traffic control and operations at work zones usually are not very effective in mitigating the work zone bottleneck. A major reason is that the common early merge behaviors limits utilizing the available capacity in the closed lane, especially under moderate to high traffic demands. Recently, using late merge strategy is encouraged to prevent early merge behavior and fully utilize the closed lane and therefore increase capacity of work zone. The development of late merge strategy was not enough to substantially improve the situation due to the lack of compliance and communication among drivers. This thesis suggests and investigates a smart work zone merge system enabled by connected vehicles. The main principle is to enhance the opportunity of cooperative late merge via the new technology, connected vehicles (CV). The system is called Cooperative Late Merge System (CLMS) where the layout has additional advanced elements. The CLMS has been introduced and investigated by using simulation software package (VISSIM). Microscopic car lane-changing model was selected and updated to fit with the main goal of the system. Simulation experiment included a traditional work zone system and a late merge system to compare them with the performance of the CLMS. Simulation outputs are throughput, capacity, V/C ratio, delay and queue length. The CLMS has demonstrated an improved traffic operation performance at all performance measures in the case of moderate traffic demand. The system is capable of increasing throughput and capacity of work zone as well as decreasing the delay and queue length.

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