Lane-changing characteristics at weaving section

Abstract

Weaving sections between closely spaced junctions are a common feature on motorway networks. They are one of the greatest areas of conflicts because of the frequent lane changes from multiple streams of traffic. The complexity and frequency of vehicle interactionsmake weaving one of the most difficult manoeuvres on the motorway to manage and analyse. This paper presents an empirical analysis of lane-changing characteristics and mechanisms over a weaving section on the M1 motorway in England by using data (loop detector and video recording). Second-by-second individual vehicle trajectory data is extracted from the video recording and used to characterise vehicle lane-changing(LC) at weaving section. A significant traffic proportion involves in LC (48%); which are classified into the single lane-changing(SLC) (36%) and multiple lane-changing (MLC) (13%). Compared to the SLC, the MLC drivers at the first LC are more aggressive (at their first LC) since they tend to accept smaller headways. For the first time, the paper explicitly reports on group behaviour in LC: 15% of the lane-changings involve platoon or weaving. The findings offer empirical evidence and new insights into vehicle lane-changing behaviour at weaving, which help inform the development of better weaving models.