Effect of adaptive cruise control systems on mixed traffic flow near an on-ramp

Mixed traffic flow consisting of vehicles equipped with adaptive cruise control (ACC) and manually driven vehicles is analyzed using car-following simulations. Simulations of merging from an on-ramp onto a freeway reported in the literature have not thus far demonstrated a substantial positive impact of ACC. In this paper cooperative merging for ACC vehicles is proposed to improve throughput and increase distance traveled in a fixed time. In such a system an ACC vehicle senses not only the preceding vehicle in the same lane but also the vehicle immediately in front in the other lane. Prior to reaching the merge region, the ACC vehicle adjusts its velocity to ensure that a safe gap for merging is obtained. If on-ramp demand is moderate, cooperative merging produces significant improvement in throughput (20%) and increases up to 3.6 km in distance traveled in 600 s for 50% ACC mixed flow relative to the flow of all-manual vehicles. For large demand, it is shown that autonomous merging with cooperation in the flow of all ACC vehicles leads to throughput limited only by the downstream capacity, which is determined by speed limit and headway time.