Evaluating the Effectiveness of Integrated Connected Automated Vehicle Applications Applied to Freeway Managed Lanes

The purpose of this study is to define an operational concept involving connected automated vehicle (CAV) operation on freeway managed lanes. Despite the low projected market penetration of CAVs during the next decade, the use of managed lane facilities has the potential to support the realization of increased mobility benefits by their very nature. The proposed CAV operation involves platoons of equipped vehicles governed by integrated CAV applications, including cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC), cooperative merge, and speed harmonization. This study proposes an algorithm for integrating CAV applications. Through microscopic simulation, the study particularly examines the effectiveness of CACC, CACC plus cooperative merge, and the addition of speed harmonization under different penetration rates. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the bundled application to enhance system throughput and reduce delay, even with low CAV penetration rates. The speed harmonization shows the greatest effects on delay reduction at medium-to-high penetration rates and some benefits even at low penetration rates. The conclusions provide operational insights and guidance for traffic management centers to implement CAV-based traffic control in the future.