Combined Alternate-Direction Lane Assignment and Reservation-Based Intersection Control

This paper presents a concept, herein called Combined Alternate-Direction Lane Assignment and Reservation-based Intersection Control (CADLARIC), for organizing directionally unrestricted traffic flows in automated vehicle environment. In the proposed concept, vehicles can use lanes traditionally reserved for the opposite direction of travel. This concept allows left and right turning vehicles to align themselves in an appropriate lane before reaching the downstream intersection, so that they can smoothly go through the intersection without having any conflicts with vehicles from the other movements. Conflicts between through movements are handled by a reservation-based algorithm. To simulate the proposed concept, i.e. allow flexibility of such driving maneuvers that cannot be accomplished in the other existing simulation tools, a new microsimulation platform is developed. The proposed CADLARIC control scheme is evaluated through a comparison with a conventional fixed-time signal control and Fully Reservation-Based Intersection Control (FRIC). The results show that CADLARIC: (i) significantly outperforms other control methods in terms of the traffic performance (i.e. delays and stops); and (ii) generates a reduction of conflicting situations at the network level when compared to FRIC.