Because the traffic volume exceeds the total design capacity of the local road,traffic jams occur during the peak traffic hours,especially in Interstates 5,90,405 and State Road 520 in America.The paper analyzes the provided map and Excel spreadsheet from the 2017 MCM Problem C,and obtains some feasible results.The influences caused by traffic situations such as different percentage of self-driving cars in the total number of vehicles are discussed firstly.By employing the undetermined coefficient principle,it is found that the usage of selfdriving cars can ease traffic jam to a certain extent,and there is significant difference of effects if the percentage of vehicles using self-driving cars increases from 10%to 90%.Based on maximum utilization of resources and smooth traffic,the tipping point where performance changes markedly is found.If the percentage of self-driving car exceeds the threshold,it not only fails to play its role totally,but increases the traffic of road.Furthermore,the setting of the exclusive lanes for self-driving car is explored.If the number of vehicles in each non-exclusive lane is less than the road capacity,setting up exclusive lane is reasonable.By comparative analysis,we find that the exclusive lane should be set in peak traffic hours only.Finally,the sensitivity analysis is applied in the proposed models.The results show that the analysis methods and models proposed are reasonable.We think that the national use of self-driving car can solve the traffic issue effectively.
