The Impacts of Heavy-Duty Vehicle Platoon Spacing Policy on Traffic Flow
Spacing policy of heavy-duty vehicle (HDV) platoons determines the inter-vehicle distance between HDVs in steady state. It plays an important role in traffic throughput. For example, an HDV platoon with small spacing policies saves space on the highway so that it can accommodate more vehicles. Therefore, the traffic efficiency and highway capacity may be improved by applying small spacing policies on HDV platoons. Conversely, an HDV platoon with larger spacing policies requires more space on highways and thus has a negative impact on capacity. This paper specifically focuses on two commonly used spacing policies in HDV platooning, constant vehicle spacing (CVS) and constant time gap (CTG) and investigates respective impacts on traffic flow. The speed-density relation of mixed traffic flow is formulated as a function of traffic density, percentage of HDVs on highway and spacing policy of HDV platoon. In order to investigate the effects of HDV platooning to vehicle interaction, the speed-density relation is derived from car-following model. Numerical results show that HDV platooning with CVS policy yields the most significant improvement on highway capacity, compared with no HDV platooning scenario and HDV platooning with CTG policy. However, it has worse performance in heavily-congested traffic flows than CTG policy. A mixed CVS-CTG policy is therefore proposed in this study, in order to combine the benefits from CVS and CTG policies to traffic flow. This mixed spacing policy could be a promising alternative to the single spacing policy.
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Supplemental Notes:
- This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AHB45 Standing Committee on Traffic Flow Theory and Characteristics. Alternate title: Impacts of Heavy-Duty Vehicle Platoon Spacing Policy on Traffic Flow.
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Corporate Authors:
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Authors:
- Deng, Qichen
- Burghout, Wilco
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Conference:
- Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting
- Location: Washington DC, United States
- Date: 2016-1-10 to 2016-1-14
- Date: 2016
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Digital/other
- Features: Figures; References; Tables;
- Pagination: 18p
- Monograph Title: TRB 95th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Autonomous intelligent cruise control; Car following; Speed volume relationships; Traffic density; Traffic platooning; Trucks; Vehicle spacing
- Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Freight Transportation;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01594486
- Record Type: Publication
- Report/Paper Numbers: 16-0403
- Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
- Created Date: Mar 24 2016 10:51AM