A Macroscopic Study On Dedicated Highway Lanes For Autonomous Vehicles

The introduction of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) will have far-reaching effects on road traffic in cities and on highways. The implementation of Automated Highway Systems (AHS), possibly with a dedicated lane only for AVs, is believed to be a requirement to maximise the benefit from the advantages of AVs. We study the ramifications of an increasing percentage of AVs on the whole traffic system with and without the introduction of a dedicated highway AV lane. We conduct a macroscopic simulation of the city of Singapore under user equilibrium conditions with realistic traffic demand. We present findings regarding average travel time, throughput, road usage, and lane-access control. Our results show a reduction of average travel time as a result of increasing the portion of AVs in the system. We show that the introduction of an AV lane is not beneficial in terms of average commute time. Furthermore a notable shift of travel demand away from the highways towards major and small roads is noticed in early stages of AV penetration of the system. Finally, our findings show that after a certain threshold percentage of AVs the differences between AV and no AV lane scenarios become negligible.