EFFICIENCY EVALUATION OF PASSING LANE CONFIGURATIONS ON DEDICATED LANE FOR AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE LEVEL 3

Abstract

A dedicated lane for autonomous vehicles (AVs) is considered as an efficient method for achieving AV’s feature the most. However, slow-moving vehicles on dedicated lane might cause delaying and decrease the tailing vehicle’s capacity. This study aims to evaluate different passing lane configurations on a dedicated lane in terms of capacity, traffic operation, and safety. Three configurations purposed in this study; dedicated lane without passing (scenario 1), the dedicated lane with partial passing section or the 2+1 configuration (scenario 2) and allowing AV to use a manual lane as passing lane (scenario 3). This study used microsimulation software, VISSIM, for simulation and SSAM for safety evaluation. The flow rate and heavy vehicles penetration rate vary in each simulation. Safety evaluation in this study is evaluated from the potential of rare-end and land-changing crash event in each simulation. The result showed that scenario 2 provided slightly higher capacity, higher traveling speed, and lower accident rate than other scenarios when the flow rate and the heavy vehicles penetration rate is high. Scenario 3, which AV can use both types of lanes, provide higher capacity and traveling speed than others scenario when the flow rate is low to moderate, however, this scenario causes effects to adjacent manual lanes due to mixed traffic and resulted in the highest accident rate. The AVs in this study were unable to connect to each other or infrastructures, hence, future study should consider connectivity in AVs since it can maximize the benefits of passing lane.