Management of Connected and Automated Vehicle Disengagements in the Proximity of Work Zones

Work zones (WZ) incur profound impacts in the safety, mobility and environmental realms. Researchers and transportation agencies have exerted significant efforts in mitigating their adverse impacts (i.e. high crash frequency and severity, congestion, increased energy consumption and emissions). To this end, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) have been used to deploy speed managements techniques in the proximity of WZs and traffic diversion to alternative routes. Focus has been also placed on WZ traffic analysis, WZ safety analysis and modelling, and impact assessment.

The advent of connected vehicle (CV) technologies has brought new opportunities in traffic management around WZs. Vehicle-to infrastructure (V2I) and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication technologies were shown to improve mobility performance around WZs. Moreover, vehicle automation in conjunction with vehicle connectivity has facilitated cooperative driving among connected and automated vehicles (CAV) which can yield travel time, safety and emission benefits at freeway WZs. However, this is the first study that focuses on management of CAV disengagements in the proximity of WZs to the authors’ best knowledge.

System-initiated (downward) control transitions are expected to be frequent in the proximity of WZs due to ambiguous lane markings and complex traffic situations. The authors name the areas that the latter control transitions will be taking place as “Transition Areas” (TA). This study investigates the effects of Day 1 Cooperative ITS (C-ITS) applications and Cooperative Driving (CD) on management of vehicle disengagements and work zone performance with the use of microscopic traffic simulator SUMO.