Effect of dynamic route guidance on urban traffic network under Connected Vehicle environment

Abstract

Although Connected Vehicle technology is developing rapidly, connected vehicles (CV) are going to mix with the traditional vehicles (i.e., non-connected vehicles) for a long time. The effects of deploying CV on urban traffic systems are actually not clear. The main objective of this study is to evaluate the potential effects of route guidance under connected vehicle environment on an urban traffic network in terms of traffic mobility and safety. Microscopic simulation approach is used to conduct CV environment simulation and the rolling horizon approach is used for information updating among the connected vehicles. Meanwhile, driving behavior is modeled through aggressiveness and awareness of drivers. Traffic mobility for the road network was measured by average trip time and average vehicle trip speed. A surrogate measure, i.e., the time-to-collision involved incident rate for one kilometer driven, was used to assess the safety of the road network. Based on a real urban traffic network, the impacts of market penetration levels of connected vehicles and information updating intervals were studied. Simulation results showed that market penetration level of connected vehicles has little impact on the mobility and safety of road network. In addition, according to the simulation conducted in this paper, shorter updating interval is shown to be likely to lead to better mobility, while the safety of road network is likely to decline, under the assumptions embraced in the simulation. By contrast, the simulation also showed that longer updating interval is likely to lead to better safety and decreased mobility.