Abstract
There has been an increase in the cases of installation of the Moving-Light-Guide-System (hereafter, MLGS) as a countermeasure against traffic congestion at sag bottlenecks of freeways in Japan. MLGS creates a flow of LED light traveling with constant speed alongside the car. It intends drivers to perceive the speed gap between MLGS and their own vehicles and encourage the spontaneous speed recovery on uphill section at sag. It has been reported that traffic congestion at some bottlenecks were mitigated due to the installation of MLGSs, though its influence on the driving behavior and the mechanism of congestion-mitigation were still unrevealed. In this study, based on a car-following experiment conducted on the Hanshin Expressway Route 3, the influence of the MLGS in the uphill section on driving behavior was analyzed. Based on the rigorous statistical analysis, the following findings were obtained. (1) Regardless of the operating speed, the MLGS tended to exert a change in the inter-vehicle distance on entire section. (2) When the MLGS was operated at a light flow speed of 60 km/h, for drivers who tried to match the vehicle speed with the MLGS light flow speed, the inter-vehicle distance was likely to decrease and traffic capacity improved in the uphill section. (3) The average of the PICUD value in the uphill section was higher in the presence of the MLGS than in their absence, and even in the downhill section of the PICUD value was maintained in the safety level in the uphill section. (4) Although the effect on stability improvement was not found to be statistically significant, the number of drivers who exhibited extreme car-following behavior decreased, which may contribute to an overall improvement of the traffic situation in the entire section.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, Traffic Worst Ranking Summary. http://www.mlit.go.jp/common/001130029.pdf
Ludmann, J., Neunzig, D., Weilkes, M.: Traffic simulation with consideration of driver models, theory and examples. Veh. Syst. Dyn. 27(5–6), 491–516 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1080/00423119708969344
Goñi Ros, B., Knoop, V.L., Van Arem, B., Hoogendoorn, S.P.: Optimization of traffic flow at freeway sags by controlling the acceleration of vehicles equipped with in-car systems. Transp. Res. Part C 71, 1–18 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trc.2016.06.022
Nishi, R., Tomoeda, A., Shimura, K., Nishinari, K.: Theory of jam-absorption driving. Transp. Res. Part B 50, 116–129 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trb.2013.02.003
He, Z., Zheng, L., Song, L., Zhu, N.: A jam-absorption driving strategy for mitigating traffic oscillations. IEEE Trans. Intell. Transp. Syst. 18(4), 802–813 (2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TITS.2016.2587699
Stern, R., Cui, S., Monache, M., Bhadani, R., Bunting, M., Churchill, M., Hamilton, N., Haulcy, R., Pohlmann, H., Wu, F., Piccoli, B., Seibold, B., Sprinke, J., Work, D.: Dissipation of stop-and-go waves via control of autonomous vehicles: field experiments (2017). arXiv: 1705.01693v1[cs.SY]
Transport Facilitation Study Group on Highway Sags: Toward Realization of Effective Transportation Facilitation to Traffic Jam Locations on Highway Sags (2015). http://www.nilim.go.jp/lab/qcg/japanese/2reserch/1field/36smoothingsag/201510_sag_report.pdf
Endo, M., Nakagawa, H., Fukase, M., Hashimoto, D.: The measures against traffic congestion in Tokyo Wan Aqua-Line EXPWY. In: Proceedings of the 34th Traffic Engineering Research Paper, pp. 255–261 (2014). https://doi.org/10.14954/jste.1.4_B_1. (in Japanese)
Masumoto, H., Higatani, A., Kodama, T., Kitazawa, T., Suzuki, K.: Evaluating the effect of using the moving light guidance system on Hanshin Expressway against traffic congestion. In: The Proceeding of 55th Infrastructure Planning Conference (2017). (in Japanese)
Kameoka, H., Oneyama, H., Watanabe, Y., Sakurai, M.: Verification of effect of alleviating congestion occurrence by dynamic flashing control of roadside light emitters making use of light scattering. In: The Proceeding of 48th Infrastructure Planning Conference (2013). (in Japanese)
Edie, L.: Car-following and steady-state theory for non-congested traffic. Oper. Res. 9(1), 66–75 (1961)
Takashima, M., Shiomi, Y.: Monitoring traffic flow dynamics at sags: data assimilation approach. J. JSCE 73(5), 1073–1082 (2017). https://doi.org/10.2208/jscejipm.73.I_1073. (in Japanese)
Uno, N., Iida, Y., Itsubo, S., Yasuhara, S.: A microscopic analysis of traffic conflict caused by lane-changing vehicle at weaving section. In: Proceedings of the 13th Mini-Euro Conference “Handling Uncertainty in Transportation Analysis of Traffic and Transportation Systems”, pp. 143–148 (2002)
Baba, M., Saga, S., Shiduki, B., Takahashi, S.: A Study on Posture Improvement Support System Using Shoulder Muscle Fatigue Measurement, IPSJ SIG technical reports, (HCI), 2017-HCI-171, pp. 1–8 (2017)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Tabira, Y., Shiomi, Y. (2019). Effect of the Moving-Light-Guide-System on Driving Behavior at Sag. In: Mine, T., Fukuda, A., Ishida, S. (eds) Intelligent Transport Systems for Everyone’s Mobility. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7434-0_23
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7434-0_23
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-13-7433-3
Online ISBN: 978-981-13-7434-0
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceEconomics and Finance (R0)