Impact of Automated Vehicles on Capacity of the German Freeway Network

This paper shows the results of ex-ante impact assessment of automated vehicles on capacity of freeways using microscopic traffic flow simulation. The simulation was conducted for different penetration rates of automated vehicles in Germany´s national vehicle fleet, which were predicted using a newly developed vehicle cohort stock model. For this aim, the standard segments of German freeway infrastructure including basic, merge, diverge, and weaving segments were simulated. The resulting capacity increments were assigned to a country-wide traffic flow model of Germany. In the next step, an economic appraisal was conducted based on the methodology for the cost-benefit analysis used in the current German Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan (BVWP). The results reveal that the conservative driving behavior of automated vehicles, as foreseen by the current legislation, has a negative impact on the capacity of freeways. On the contrary, automated technologies that allow shorter headways between the vehicles, have the potential to increase the capacity of the freeway network by 30 % and reduce traffic delays significantly. However, small market penetration rates of automated vehicles do not lead to discernible capacity benefits and the potential benefits are likely to be realized at higher penetration into the traffic mix.      «

This paper shows the results of ex-ante impact assessment of automated vehicles on capacity of freeways using microscopic traffic flow simulation. The simulation was conducted for different penetration rates of automated vehicles in Germany´s national vehicle fleet, which were predicted using a newly developed vehicle cohort stock model. For this aim, the standard segments of German freeway infrastructure including basic, merge, diverge, and weaving segments were simulated. The resulting capacit...     »