Economic comparison between vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) at freeway on-ramps based on microscopic simulations

The primary objective of this study is to evaluate how vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) affect the traffic system economically, compared with manual vehicles (MVs). The total economic cost involves the value of time, gasoline consumption, road wear, and vehicular equipment. The microscopic testbed is established with an integrated simulator, which is based on microscopic traffic models for car-following and lane-changing. With the analysis of spatiotemporal dynamics of average speed and travel time, 14 countries are chosen to investigate in monomial cost under full MV, V2V and V2I situations, respectively. The simulation results show that the monomial and comprehensive cost of the developed countries differs from that of the developing countries due to the different income and price level. However, the V2V-based scenario generally performs better than MV and V2I in traffic efficiency and the first three economic indexes. The MV-based scenario only has a small advantage in the total cost at a low-tech level, while the traffic with V2V and V2I communications is superior to the conventional traffic after a price drop on connected vehicle facilities. Findings of this study provide useful information for the economic evaluation of connected vehicles as well as the management of automated highway systems.