| dc.description.abstract | The advent of connected vehicle technology provides the potential to reduce travel times along congested urban corridors. Not only that, this technology may also be useful for providing transportation agencies with assistance to manage incidents (e.g. lane closures due to an accident) in such a way that travelers will experience a decreased amount of delay. This project’s goal is to understand and quantify the effectiveness of deploying Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) technology for a specific mobility/safety application on an urban corridor by creating a queue-warning application. Effectiveness is determined by investigating the impacts that market penetration rates, rerouting strategies, and driver reaction times have upon the travel time reliability of an urban corridor. U.S. Highway 75 in Plano, TX is simulated and results of this investigation reveal that even without active reroute strategies, connected vehicles can reduce the average travel time during an incident with lane closures. As connected vehicles become increasingly prominent at market penetration rates of 30% and 50%, the average travel time for drivers on U.S. Highway 75 is reduced and remains relatively stable as market penetration rates continue to increase. As the reaction time of connected vehicle drivers decreased (due to drivers’ awareness about the incident), there is a decrease in average travel time along the corridor, increased consistency in average travel times for higher market penetration rates, and increased similarity in the performance results of the five strategies used. | en |
