An optimal lane configuration management scheme for a mixed traffic freeway with connected vehicle platoons

With the emergent connectivity, both Connected Automated Vehicles (CAVs) and Connected Regular Vehicles (CRVs) have the capability to form platoons that can be defined as connected vehicle platoons, thereby enhancing the capacity of freeways. To fully leverage the innovations of CAVs and CRVs in improving traffic flow mobility, dedicated lanes with distinct vehicle type authority are proposed. Existing studies suggest that the mobility performance of a road section with different lane authority configurations is significantly influenced by the compatibility between lane configurations and traffic flow characteristics, such as penetration rate of connected vehicles (i.e. CAVs and CRVs) and arrival rate per lane. Motivated by the above research need, this paper proposes an optimal lane configuration management scheme to maximize discharge flow in a two-lane freeway mixed traffic environment. To begin with, four lane configuration strategies with different distinct vehicle type authorities are introduced. Analytical models are provided to mathematically derive the discharge flow of given four lane configuration strategies, according to the investigation of single-lane capacity and upstream arriving traffic demand. By configuration strategy-based analytical models, the optimal lane configuration management scheme is proposed. We then conduct numerical analysis to validate the effectiveness of the proposed analytical models of lane configuration strategies under various penetration rates of CAVs and CRVs. As the result indicated, several important factors have significant impacts on the optimal lane configuration management scheme, such as traffic demand and its allocations on each lane, and CAVs/CRVs penetration.