Measuring the impacts of connected vehicles on travel time reliability in a work zone environment: an agent-based approach

Abstract

The continuous advancement of connected vehicle (CV) technologies and its increasing market penetration (MP) will change the nature of traffic flow fundamentals by upending the traditional traffic composition. The objective of this paper is to create an agent-based modeling framework to evaluate the impact of the vehicle to vehicle (V2V) and vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) technology on the mobility performance (i.e., travel time and its reliability) of a two-lane highway work zone scenario. This paper studies when and at what MP will the mobility benefits of connected vehicles emerge. Results showed that the mobility benefits are highly dependent on the CVs MP levels and traffic flow rates. In addition, the study found that the higher the traffic flow rate is, the higher MP level is required to enable the mobility benefits in the mixed traffic environment. Research findings will inform agency professionals, traffic engineers, and planners the achievable benefits that could accompany the implementation of CV technologies in diverse roadway settings such as work zone. Moreover, the results will help the decision-makers in agencies as state DOTs to develop effective resource allocation strategies and evaluate the cost and benefit ratio of deploying this technology in highway work zone scenario.

Keywords:

• Agent-based simulation
• connected vehicle technology
• mobility benefits
• work zone

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.