• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.23 no.8 s.86
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• pp.53-66
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• 2005

This paper analyzes the effects of acceleration lane lengths on the traffic characteristics of merging areas. Two merging areas, Suwon IC and Singal JC, which have remarkably different acceleration lane length were selected as field study sites. Traffic data were collected through dividing each merging area into several subsections. Not only conventional flow, speed and density data but also a newly introduced MOE, density variation were used to analyzed the characteristics of merging area. Singal JC which has longer acceleration lane than Suwon IC showed more severe congestion, and the cause of the results was figured out.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.38 no.6
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• pp.879-885
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• 2018

The highway weaving section is a point where there is a conflict caused by entry and exit vehicles. In order to minimize the impact on the main line, an accumulation line should be installed. The design speed of the collecting part is 50 km/h, but the actual driver does not have proper deceleration according to the design speed. In this study, considering the driving behaviors, the design specification, and the driver 's viewing angle, the appropriate separation distance for safe entry and exit of collecting, connecting, and collecting roads was examined. As a result of the analysis, it is found that a distance of 60m is required from the point where the merging starts. The results of this study are expected to contribute to the improvement of driver safety due to the conflict between entry and exit vehicles when applied to the weaving section where collecting roads are installed.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.115-126
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• 2009

The lane-change behavior usually consists of discretionary lane-change and mandatory lane-change types. For the first type, drivers change lanes selectively to maintain their own driving condition and the second type is the case that the drivers must change the current lane, which can occur in recurrent congestion sections like merging and weaving sections. The mandatory lane-change behavior have a great effect on the operation condition of freeway. In this paper, we first generate data such as traffic volumes, speeds, densities, and the number of lane-change within the merging and weaving sections using the data of individual vehicle collected from time-lapse aerial photography. And then, the data is divided into the stable and congested flow by analyzing the speed variation pattern of individual vehicles. In addition, the number of lane-changing from ramp to mainline within every 30-meter interval is investigated before and after traffic congestion at study sites and the distribution of lane-changing at each 30-meter point is analyzed to identify the variation of lane-changing ratio depending on the stable and congested flows. To recognize the effect of mainline flow influenced by ramp flow, this study also analyzes the characteristics of the lane-changing distributions within the lanes of mainline. The purpose of this paper is to present the basic theory to be used in developing a lane-changing model at the merging and weaving sections on freeways.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.38-51
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• 2020

A bottleneck and congestion occur when a freeway is closed due to maintenance and construction activities on the freeway. Although various traffic managements have been developed to improve the traffic efficiency at freeway work zones, such as merge control, there is a limit to those controls with human drivers. On the other hand, the wireless communication of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) enables the operation of advanced traffic management. This study developed a traffic control strategy that integrates Dynamic Merge Control (DMC) and Lane Change Control (LCC) in a CAV environment. DMC operates as an either early or late merge based on the occupancy rate of upstream of the work zone. The LCC algorithm determines the number of vehicles that need to change their lane to balance the traffic volume on open lanes. The simulation results showed that integrated control improves the cumulative vehicle count, average speed upstream, and average network travel time.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.354-372
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• 2016

This study identified factors affecting the crash severity at freeway work zones. A nice feature of this study was to take into account the characteristics of work zone traffic management in analyzing traffic safety concerns. In addition to crash records, vehicle detection systems (VDS) data and work zone historical data were used for establishing a dataset to be used for statistical analyses based on an ordered probit model. A total of six safety improvement strategies for freeway work zones, including traffic merging method, guidance information provision, speed management, warning information systems, traffic safety facility, and monitoring of effectiveness for countermeasures, were also proposed.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.221-227
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• 2008

This study identifies the relationship between traffic data quality obtained from loop detectors and their location. Traffic data basically shows traffic flow conditions and thus, these information can be used as inputs for various transportation management strategies. Out study presents how to determine optimal downstream detector location on merging area in order to enhance the effects of ramp metering strategies. Microscopic simulation model, PARAMICS, is used as the main analytical tool. Assuming that detector location relies heavily on traffic flow characteristics in each roadway segment, we perform statistical analysis to identify homogeneous traffic conditions on merging area.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.33-42
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• 2000

This Paper is a Part of research Project series to analyze unique traffic characteristics observable within weaving sections on urban freeways. The research objectives were to establish with headway distribution and maximum Passing volume on weaving sections the basis of weaving designs that can promote safety and efficiency. Until now, when one wants to check the maximum Passing volume on weaving sections, it is taken for granted using headway distribution of freeway basic section. However. it was suspected in this research that for weaving sections different form of headway distribution had better be used. To prove this, field surveys were made to count headway intervals which supposedly were influenced not only by freeway basic section flows but also by weaving flows and later on used to develop headway distribution for weaving sections. For validation of the developed headway distribution, $x^2$-test was applied to three different data set of observed headways, currently used headway distribution for basic sections(Pearson Type III distribution) and new headway distribution. The result indicated new headway distribution as the most appropriate distribution form. Also, maximum passing volume within weaving sections was calculated based on new headway distribution and compared with Drew's maximum Passing volume.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.195-205
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• 2001

The objective of the paper is to analyze the traffic characteristics for freeway merging area. Freeway merging area is different from basic section due to ramp vehicles. Therefore, to understand the traffic characteristics of (leeway merging area, this study focused on two factors including critical time headway required in merging maneuver and maximum possible merging volume. In this paper, new model that adopts critical time headway instead of critical time gap in calculating the maximum possible merging volume based on probability function was developed In previous studies, for calculating the maximum possible merging volume, it was considered that merging vehicles could merge freely if a given time gap was greater than the critical time gap. Also, the critical time gap was used as the same value in all traffic flow conditions. But, a time gap required in merging maneuver could be changed, even to the same driver, because difference of relative speed varies in different traffic flow conditions. So, in some cases, the critical time gap could be insufficient value in merging maneuver. Therefore, in this study. a calculating procedure for critical time headway in all traffic flow conditions was presented. Also, the maximum possible merging volume and capacity for freeway merging area were calculated by using the previously found critical time headway.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.47-54
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• 2021

The number of freeway traffic accidents in Korea is about 4,000 as of 2020, and deaths per traffic accident is about 3.7 times higher than other roads due to non-recurring congestion and high driving speed. Most of the accident types on freeways are side and rear-end collisions, and one of the main factors is hazard traffic flow caused by merge, diverge and accidents. Therefore, the hazard traffic flow, which appears in a continuous flow such as a freeway, can be said to be important information for the driver to prevent accidents. This study tried to classify hazard traffic flows, such as the speed change point and the section where the speed difference by lane, using individual vehicle information. The homogeneous segment of speed was classified using spatial separation based on geohash and space mean speed that can indicate the speed difference of individual vehicles within the same section and the speed deviation between vehicles. As a result, I could extract the diverging influence segment and the hazard traffic flow segment that can provide dangerous segments information of freeways.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.57-66
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• 2007

Weaving is defined as the crossing of two or more traffic streams traveling in the same general direction along a significant length of highway without the aid of traffic control devices. Compared with other freeway sections, perturbation is easy to happen at weaving section. Because there are a lot of lane-changing maneuvers at the weaving section, traffic is subject to turbulence in excess of that normally presents on freeway basic section. This turbulence causes operational problems and its impact must be considered. The purpose of this paper is to perform a basic study on flow characteristics by lane, which can be achieved through analyzing breakdown phenomenon in the microscopic approach. The study made use of data derived from the aerial photography for the microscopic analysis. This research produced the 30-second interval data such as flows, speeds, and densities for the macroscopic analysis and derived the vehicular data to draw time-space diagram for the microscopic analysis. The paper analyzed the traffic characteristics using flows, speeds and densities variation and investigated the conditions of breakdown occurrence with the time-space diagrams. The breakdown phenomenon was identified at weaving section and the propagation from free flow to synchronized flow was observed in this study. In the future, the findings help develop the traffic operational algorithm to manage the traffic congestion under ubiquitous circumstance since the conditions of breakdown Phenomenon can be understood more.