Measurement and Analysis of Heterogenous Vehicle Following Behavior on Urban Freeways: Time Headways and Standstill Distances

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2015-01-01
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Houchin, Andrew
Dong, Jing
Hawkins, Neal
Knickerbocker, Skylar
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Dong-O'Brien, Jing
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Institute for Transportation
InTrans administers 14 centers and programs, and several other distinct research specialties, and a variety of technology transfer and professional education initiatives. More than 100 Iowa State University faculty and staff work at InTrans, and from 200 to 250 student assistants from several ISU departments conduct research while working closely with university faculty. InTrans began in 1983 as a technical assistance program for Iowa’s rural transportation agencies.
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Civil, Construction and Environmental EngineeringInstitute for Transportation
Abstract

Microscopic traffic modelling is a popular tool in the transportation field, but using such models comes with significant data needs in order to properly calibrate them. Two important driver behavior parameters in these models are the preferred time headways and standstill distances. In this paper, an economical method for collecting headways and standstill distances is presented and applied to urban freeways in Iowa, USA. The following time headways and standstill distances were categorized into four combinations of car and truck pairs. It was found that headway values largely depend on the following vehicle type-when a car was following the average headway was around 2 seconds, compared to around 3 seconds when a truck was following. Additionally, the car-car combination leaves much less space when stopped than when a pair involves trucks. In particular, the average standstill distance of a car following a car was found to be around 9 feet, while the average standstill distances are around 12 feet when a truck is involved. However, both headways and standstill distances follow fairly disperse distributions, due to the heterogeneity in driver behavior. Thus, microsimulation software should be improved to allow these parameters to follow distributions.

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This proceeding was published as Houchin, Andrew, Jing Dong, Neal Hawkins, and Skylar Knickerbocker. "Measurement and analysis of heterogenous vehicle following behavior on urban freeways: Time headways and standstill distances." In Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC), 2015 IEEE 18th International Conference on (2015): 888-893. DOI: 10.1109/ITSC.2015.149. Posted with permission.

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Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 UTC 2015