California Partners for Advanced Transportation Technology

The objective of this paper is to develop a throughput model of a multiple- lane Automated Highway System (AHS) with lane changes. The paper uses deterministic approximations to model highway throughput, accounting for both longitudinal and lateral requirements. The model is designed to account for trip-length distributions, and the effect of these distributions on the rate of lane changes between each pair of adjacent lanes. To illustrate fundamental principles, the model is applied to an idealized highway operating under sanitary conditions, both in time and space. Parametric analysis is used to study the effects of design parameters, pertaining to the execution of lane change maneuvers, on capacity.