Perspective Benefits of Connected Vehicles Using Signalized Left Turn Assistant Application: Simulation-Based Study
(Room Palms Ballroom - Booth 100)
16 Jul 19
5:30 PM
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7:00 PM
Simulation modeling can play a major role in supporting the pre-deployment and post-deployment assessment of CV-based applications, particularly given the limited deployment of these applications and the low market penetrations of CV that are expected in the near future. This study demonstrates the use of simulation modeling to assess the safety and mobility benefits of one CV-based application at signalized intersections, which is the Signalized Left Turn Assist (SLTA). The benefits of SLTA were analyzed in this study using a calibrated microscopic traffic simulation package. Real-world gap acceptance distribution was used to incorporate the impact of driver’s behavior on the SLTA application. A new method was developed to calibrate VISSIM to reflect real-world gap acceptance distributions utilizing priority rules and associated vehicle classes. The simulation results showed significant improvement in increasing the left-turn capacity by approximately 45% with increasing the market penetration of CV from 10% to 100%, assuming 100% compliance of CV drivers with the alerts. In addition, the results showed that with a 100% market penetration and 100% compliance, the average delay for all vehicles could be reduced by approximately 38%. Finally, the safety benefits of SLTA were determined through a combination of VISSIM and the SSAM. The results showed a reduction of the number of conflicts with increasing SLTA market penetration. The results from this analysis shows that the safety benefits with 100 CV market penetration and 100% compliance is about 7.53% when assessed the safety using PET and to 11.22% when assessed the safety using TTC.