On gap matching for lane-changing vehicles: coordinated strategies to improve traffic flow at weave bottlenecks

The weaving section on the freeway will be an active bottleneck due to vehicles’ mandatory or discretionary lane-changing (LC) conflicts. In the early stages of the development of intelligent connected transportation, destination information collection of weaving vehicles is possible, which provides an opportunity to improve performance in weaving traffic. In this paper, a simulation system with coordinated strategies embedded to satisfy the LC needs is presented under the weaving traffic flow. First, an algorithm is proposed to evaluate the balance between the demand for LC vehicles and the available gaps provided in weaving traffic, which can be adjusted by variable speed limit (VSL) and ramp metering strategies. Second, to validate the proposed algorithm, a typical weave section with a merge and a diverge connected through a single auxiliary lane is researched, and a simulation platform based on cellular automata has been developed. The optimal control strategies are obtained by model predictive control (MPC) and taking the minimum travel time as an objective. Third, the advantages of coordinated control strategies are studied and discussed in traffic efficiency improvement and the success of LC proportions under different combinations of weaving ratios and large vehicle traffic mix.