Title: GAP ACCEPTANCE CHARACTERISTICS FOR RAMP-FREEWAY SURVEILLANCE AND CONTROL AND DISCUSSION
Abstract: GAP ACCEPTANCE CHARACTERISTICS AND MERGING DELAY CHARACTERISTICS WERE DETERMINED ON 6 INBOUND ENTRANCE RAMPS OF THE GULF FREEWAY. MERGING VEHICLES WERE DIVIDED INTO 2 GROUPS' THOSE IN WHICH THE DRIVER REJECTED GAPS BEFORE FINALLY ACCEPTING A GAP AND THOSE IN WHICH THE DRIVER OF A RAMP VEHICLE ACCEPTED THE FIRST GAP. THE FORMER WAS REFERRED TO AS STOPPED VEHICLES AND THE LATTER AS MOVING VEHICLES. THE CRITICAL GAP FOR STOPPED VEHICLES WAS FOUND TO BE ABOUT 20 PERCENT HIGHER THAN FOR MOVING VEHICLES. IT WAS CONCLUDED THAT THE CRITICAL GAP /MEDIAN/ FOR THE MERGING MANEUVER FROM AN ENTRANCE RAMP IS INDEPENDENT OF THE FREEWAY VOLUME BUT IS APPARENTLY AFFECTED BY RAMP GEOMETRICS AND RAMP CONTROLS. A DISTRIBUTION OF CRITICAL GAPS WAS FORMED AND FITTED TO A GAMMA DISTRIBUTION. MERGING DELAY VALUES CALCULATED USING THIS DISTRIBUTION WERE SHOWN TO BE HIGHER THAN THOSE CALCULATED ASSUMING THAT ALL DRIVERS HAVE THE SAME FIXED CRITICAL GAP. IF THE DISTRIBUTION TIME SPENT BY THE MERGING VEHICLE AT THE HEAD OF THE QUEUE IS APPROXIMATED BY A GAMMA DISTRIBUTION, THE ENTRANCE RAMP MERGING OPERATION MAY BE CONSIDERED WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF CLASSICAL QUEUING THEORY. BASED ON THIS QUEUING MODEL, A RAMP METERING TECHNIQUE WAS DEVELOPED, WHICH TAKES INTO ACCOUNT THE INDIVIDUALITY OF ENTRANCE RAMPS. IT IS SHOWN THAT THE NEED EXISTS FOR AN AUTOMATIC RAMP CONTROL TECHNIQUE COMBINING THE MICROSCOPIC APPROACH DEVELOPED IN THIS PAPER WITH THE SYSTEMS OR MACROSCOPIC APPROACH WHICH HAS BEEN USED AS THE BASIS FOR THE PAST MANUAL RAMP METERING EXPERIMENTS ON THE GULF FREEWAY.
Publication Year: 1967
Publication Date: 1967-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 12
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot