Empirical Study of Lane-Changing Characteristics on High-Occupancy-Vehicle Facilities with Different Types of Access Control Based on Aerial Survey Data

Abstract

Research on lane-changing behavior has been active for decades because of its significant impact on traffic operations. Most of the existing studies focus on generic weaving sections (e.g., on-ramps), and very few of them have investigated the lane-changing behavior along high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) facilities, especially in the context of comparing between different types of HOV-lane configuration or access control (i.e., continuous-access versus limited-access). In this study, extensive statistical analyses on lane-changing maneuvers have been conducted using a unique set of aerial photo data, which were collected from the same roadway segment before and after a conversion of HOV-lane configuration. To ensure the validity of this study, a Kalman filter smoothing algorithm was developed to clean the raw data. Results from this study indicate that the HOV-lane configuration has statistically significant impacts on lane-changing behaviors. For example, the lane-changing intensity (by location) along the continuous-access HOV facility is much more spread-out than the limited-access one. For merging into HOV-lane maneuvers, the time gap statistics (upon lane changing) are significantly different between the limited-access and continuous-access HOV-lane configuration. This study would be beneficial not only to the design of HOV lanes or other types of managed lanes, but also to the calibration of lane-changing behavior parameters in traffic microsimulation models.