• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.22 no.3 s.74
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• pp.95-105
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• 2004

The fundamental diagram is a important element in a variety of transportation studies. While various shapes of the fundamental diagram have been proposed and numerous debates on the best-fit fundamental diagram have been made, the reason why the fundamental diagram has many different shapes has not been well explained. This study introduces time sap as a key parameter to understand drivers' behavioral differences at different locations and traffic conditions, then relate to the shape of the fundamental diagram. From the freeway event detector data, it is shown that time gap follows a certain probabilistic distribution and its mean value varies along locations. It also turns out that drivers take different time gaps for different travel speeds. Three different types of time gap-speed diagrams are identified and matched to Greenberg, reversed-lambda, and inverted-V types of fundamental diagrams, respectively. This study explains the characteristics of fundamental diagrams using time gap as a microscopic variable and describes drivers' behavioral characteristics according to traffic and geometric conditions.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.145-157
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• 2004

Microscopic freeway simulation models project the uncertain values of performance measures for subject traffic conditions by explaining drivers' driving behavior with lane changing and car-following models. However, the existing lane changing models are limited to gap acceptance oriented passive behavior of drivers and not able to capture more-or-less aggressive driving behavior(e.g. cut-in lane changing) ordinarily obseved in field. This paper suggests the definition of cut-inlane changing and presents its characteristics based on the findings from two different freeway on- and off-ramp sections. In addition, this paper proposes a new lane changing model capable of handling both passive and active drivers' driving behavior for better performance of simulations. The proposed lane changing model was tested with Hanyang Simulatin (HYTSIM), a microscopic freeway simulation program developed for this study. The HYTSIM simulation results reflecting the performance of the proposed lane changing model were compared against the field data. The test results showed that the distribution of gaps collected when vehicles change lanes were statistically identical to the field data at 95% confidence level.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.29 no.2D
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• pp.227-234
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• 2009

At present, the length of deceleration lane at freeway diverging areas are designed based on the design speed of main lines and ramps. This is possible on assumption that diverging vehicles decelerate at deceleration section after moving to shoulder lane in advance. But with high diverging volume, several vehicles will try to change to exit lane at the same time. This will cause the distribution of main lane flows or some vehicles may encounter short deceleration length because they miss the proper time to change the lane. The purpose of this study is to establish a design guideline of the length of deceleration section considering the volume of diverging traffic. Also, the results of analysis by the FRESIM simulation model shows that some improvements in respect of delays, speeds and speed deviations of mainline and deceleration lane.