Novel Methods and the Maximum Likelihood Estimation Technique for Estimating Traffic Critical Gap

Most unsignalised intersection capacity calculation procedures are based on gap acceptance models. Accuracy of critical gap estimation affects accuracy of capacity and delay estimation. Several methods have been published to estimate drivers' sample mean critical gap, the Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) technique regarded as the most accurate. This study assesses three novel methods; Average Central Gap (ACG) method, Strength Weighted Central Gap method (SWCG), and Mode Central Gap method (MCG), against MLE for their fidelity in rendering true sample mean critical gaps. A Monte Carlo event based simulation model was used to draw the maximum rejected gap and accepted gap for each of a sample of 300 drivers across 32 simulation runs. Simulation mean critical gap is varied between 3s and 8s, while offered gap rate is varied between 0.05veh/s and 0.55veh/s. This study affirms that MLE provides a close to perfect fit to simulation mean critical gaps across a broad range of conditions. The MCG method also provides an almost perfect fit and has superior computational simplicity and efficiency to the MLE. The SWCG method performs robustly under high flows; however, poorly under low to moderate flows. Further research is recommended using field traffic data, under a variety of minor stream and major stream flow conditions for a variety of minor stream movement types, to compare critical gap estimates using MLE against MCG. Should the MCG method prove as robust as MLE, serious consideration should be given to its adoption to estimate critical gap parameters in guidelines. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

交叉口交通冲突严重程度量化方法

为提高交通冲突严重程度的判别精度, 基于运动单元圆假设与视频检测技术, 提出了交叉口两车交通冲突严重程度量化方法。利用视频处理程序与实地采集的视频图像提取圆单元运动学参数, 并通过迭代方法进行了冲突检测与冲突时间判定。充分考虑车辆的制动性能, 将非完全制动停车距离与瞬时车速的比值作为冲突严重程度判别临界值, 以冲突时间与临界值为参数, 建立了冲突严重程度量化值, 并对其严重程度进行了量化与分级, 以北京市某交叉路口为例进行了应用实例分析。分析结果表明: 两运动单元驶入交叉口后, 二者之间的冲突严重程度量化值由1.32增大为2.45, 后又不断减小直至无交通冲突; 随着冲突严重程度的增大, 驾驶人会采取紧急制动措施使冲突严重程度减小, 直至冲突消解。可见该方法可以方便地检测交通冲突, 准确量化交叉口两运动单元之间的冲突严重程度。     

城市交叉口车路网联信息对青年驾驶人驾驶行为的影响分析

基于驾驶模拟器设计了城市道路信号和无信号交叉口场景下的模拟驾驶实验,研究网联信息的存在和内容对青年驾驶人工作负荷和操纵行为的影响。实验共包括被试26人,均为22~30岁的青年驾驶人。结果表明：对无信号交叉口（区分次干路直行车辆和主路对向左转车辆）或信号交叉口红灯时间即将结束时,网联信息可以显著降低青年驾驶人的工作负荷,有效降低心率增长值（信号交叉口：减少1.95 beats/min;无信号交叉口：分别减少2.96 beats/min和3.29 beats/min）。此外,网联信息还可以显著降低青年驾驶人的制动反应时间（信号交叉口：降低2.35 s;无信号交叉口：分别降低2.71 s和2.09 s）,减少车辆速度标准差（信号交叉口：31.33%;无信号交叉口：分别减少47.40%和60.23%）,提升了驾驶稳定性。在信号交叉口车辆行进方向的红灯时间即将结束时,相比于指示信息,车路网联指令信息可使制动反应时间减少3.47 s,车辆的速度标准差减少39.10%。

     

降雨天气单点交叉口交通信号控制优化方法

为优化降雨天气下单点交叉口交通控制的效率, 引入了降雨修正系数, 建立了单点交叉口交通信号配时方法; 应用行动分析软件分析降雨天气交叉口处的高精度视频, 以标定饱和流率、损失时间和到达车速等参数的变化特征, 提出了饱和流率、损失时间与到达车速的降雨修正系数; 建立了基于模拟退火算法的优化模型, 计算了各降雨等级下的修正系数; 构建了基于VISSIM仿真测试环境, 评估了提出的模型优化降雨天气下单点交叉口交通信号控制的效果, 分别比较了采用优化后参数的定时配时与感应配时对采用原参数的定时配时方案的交通运行效率。分析结果表明: 小雨、中雨与大到暴雨天气下的平均车头时距分别比正常天气增加了0.314%、1.256%、2.871%, 平均损失时间分别增加了1.042%、2.829%、3.424%;在流量低于600pcu· (h·lane) -1时, 改进的感应控制方案效果较好, 比采用原预设参数方案的车均延误降低了12%~23%;当流量高于600pcu· (h·lane) -1时, 采用改进的定时控制方案效果较好, 车均延误比原方案降低13%~25%, 并可在临近饱和与过饱和状态时推迟锁死状态的产生, 车均延误最低。     

信号控制交叉口布局型式适应性评价

交叉口布局型式是空间（车道数量及功能）和时间（相位组合及相位时长）两大资源的整合。为了定量描述城市道路信号控制交叉口布局型式的适应性,提出静态适应度和动态适应度的定义及计算方法。借助VISSIM软件对南京市3个典型信号控制交叉口进行仿真,分析适应度指标与每车平均信控延误、饱和度（v／c比）指标的相关性,得出适应度评价标准。以南京市北京东路-丹凤街交叉口为例,验证了利用适应度指标评价信号控制交叉口布局型式适应性是可行的,同时,在对交叉口时空资源进行优化设计时,适应性指标可为合理选择改善措施提供依据。     

公交优先的信号交叉口配时优化方法

传统的交叉口信号配时方法将所有车辆同等对待,对于公交车辆比例较大的相位是不公平的。提出了以人总延误最小为信号周期时长的优化目标,以相位乘客流量比和相位饱和度确定绿信比的方法。应用分析表明,按照这一方法进行配时,虽然车均延误比用传统方法进行配时略大,但公交车辆和人均延误却降低了约30％,在保障交叉口交通顺畅的前提下体现了公交优先,减少了公交车辆在信号交叉口的延误。     

新型下沉式交叉口无障碍左转交通设计

在城市交叉口所有方向车流中,左转车流是对交叉口影响最大的车流。它不但会增加交叉口的平均延误,而且会大大增加交叉口的冲突点个数,对交叉口的安全性有重要的影响。从交通工程设计和安全角度出发,在广泛参照国内外先进设计理论和方法的基础上,提出一种新型的立体下沉式无障碍交叉口左转交通设计。     

Development of a signal-head-free intersection control logic in a fully connected and autonomous vehicle environment

Establishment of effective cooperation between vehicles and transportation infrastructure improves travel reliability in urban transportation networks. Lack of collaboration, however, exacerbates congestion due mainly to frequent stops at signalized intersections. It is beneficial to develop a control logic that collects basic safety message from approaching connected and autonomous vehicles and guarantees efficient intersection operations with safe and incident free vehicle maneuvers. In this paper, a signal-head-free intersection control logic is formulated into a dynamic programming model that aims to maximize the intersection throughput. A stochastic look-ahead technique is proposed based on Monte Carlo tree search algorithm to determine the near-optimal actions (i.e., acceleration rates) over time to prevent movement conflicts. Our numerical results confirm that the proposed technique can solve the problem efficiently and addresses the consequences of existing traffic signals. The proposed approach, while completely avoids incidents at intersections, significantly reduces travel time (ranging between 59.4% and 83.7% when compared to fixed-time and fully-actuated control strategies) at intersections under various demand patterns.     

Eco approaching at an isolated signalized intersection under partially connected and automated vehicles environment

This research proposed an eco-driving system for an isolated signalized intersection under partially Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAV) environment. This system prioritizes mobility before improving fuel efficiency and optimizes the entire traffic flow by optimizing speed profiles of the connected and automated vehicles. The optimal control problem was solved using Pontryagin’s Minimum Principle. Simulation-based before and after evaluation of the proposed design was conducted. Fuel consumption benefits range from 2.02% to 58.01%. The CO₂ emissions benefits range from 1.97% to 33.26%. Throughput benefits are up to 10.80%. The variations are caused by the market penetration rate of connected and automated vehicles and v/c ratio. No adverse effect is observed. Detailed investigation reveals that benefits are significant as long as there is CAV and they grow with CAV’s market penetration rate (MPR) until they level off at about 40% MPR. This indicates that the proposed eco-driving system can be implemented with a low market penetration rate of connected and automated vehicles and could be implemented in a near future. The investigation also reveals that the proposed eco-driving system is able to smooth out the shock wave caused by signal controls and is robust over the impedance from conventional vehicles and randomness of traffic. The proposed system is fast in computation and has great potential for real-time implementation.     

A continuous-flow-intersection-lite design and traffic control for oversaturated bottleneck intersections

Oversaturation has become a severe problem for urban intersections, especially the bottleneck intersections that cause queue spillover and network gridlock. Further improvement of oversaturated arterial traffic using traditional mitigation strategies, which aim to improve intersection capacity by merely adjusting signal control parameters, becomes challenging since exiting strategies may (or already) have reached their “theoretical” limits of optimum. Under such circumstance, several novel unconventional intersection designs, including the well-recognized continuous flow intersection (CFI) design, are originated to improve the capacity at bottleneck intersections. However, the requirement of installing extra sub-intersections in a CFI design would increase vehicular stops and, more critically, is unacceptable in tight urban areas with closed spaced intersections. To address these issues, this research proposes a simplified continuous flow intersection (called CFI-Lite) design that is ideal for arterials with short links. It benefits from the CFI concept to enable simultaneous move of left-turn and through traffic at bottleneck intersections, but does not need installation of sub-intersections. Instead, the upstream intersection is utilized to allocate left-turn traffic to the displaced left-turn lane. It is found that the CFI-Lite design performs superiorly to the conventional design and regular CFI design in terms of bottleneck capacity. Pareto capacity improvement for every traffic stream in an arterial system can be achieved under effortless conditions. Case study using data collected at Foothill Blvd in Los Angeles, CA, shows that the new design is beneficial in more than 90% of the 408 studied cycles. The testing also shows that the average improvements of green bandwidths for the synchronized phases are significant.