The Study of Location Specific Lane Change Impacts on Traffic Delay using Extended Cell Transmission Model

Abstract

This paper comprehensively evaluates the influence of location specific lane change executions on delay and queue length. The extended macroscopic Cell Transmission Model (CTM) based lane change model has been developed by adopting the formulations of diverging and merging in one-way traffic flow. The extended CTM model uses a pre-determined lane change rate and traffic parameters including free flow speed, jam density, cell length and time-step while the inflow parameters were generated form real traffic data collected in Bandar Sunway, Malaysia. The results demonstrate that the lane change maneuver approaching the exit of intersection incurs the highest delay. From real observation, drivers have high tendency to perform mandatory lane changing compared with discretionary lane change in urban arterials. The results can be further used to develop lane change assistance model to improve the traffic flows.