Modeling discretionary lane-changing behavior on urban streets considering drivers’ heterogeneity

ABSTRACT

Lane changes are particularly frequent on urban streets, which not only impact traffic operations, but also cause negative effects on safety. This study uses vehicle trajectory data collected from Southwest Road in Dalian, China, to investigate the influential factors of discretionary lane changing in an urban road environment. Both the standard logit model and mixed logit model were fitted to the data, which evidently identified several key factors. The mixed logit model outperformed the standard logit model in terms of model fit. The results suggest that driver heterogeneity is present on the speed differentials of the subject vehicle and the leading vehicles, and the distance gap in the target lane. A sensitivity analysis was further conducted to quantify the degree of influence of the statistically significant variables. The findings support the notion and purpose of discretionary lane changing, i.e. seeking a speed advantage and/or a more satisfactory driving environment.

KEYWORDS:

• Discretionary lane changing
• urban street
• driver heterogeneity
• mixed logit model
• sensitivity analysis

Acknowledgments

The research reported in this paper was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant Number: 51578111 and 61502069], and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [Grant Number: DUT18JC39]

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [61502069];Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [DUT18JC39];National Natural Science Foundation of China [51578111].