An Automated Freight Transport System (AFTS) refers to a specially equipped set of lanes (DFLs) and trucks (ACTs) in which trucks are automatically controlled. To travel on a DFL, a driver of an ACT might pull into the designed lanes, perhaps similar to some of today's high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes. It's clear that for diverging from a DFL, the similar (but vice versa) operation must be done. However, control of these ACTs will be assumed by the system but the method (or scenario) of control and also design of required facilities will have an important role on whole set of AFTS and ordinary highways effectiveness. A major advantage of an AFTS will be about considerable transport of freight traffic, in many cases on the existing road right-of-way. This should mean more rapidly transport of trucks without devoting significantly more land to highways on dedicated sections of AFTS. However, due to this rapidly change in freight transport, perhaps occurs some discontinuity on whole network of traffic flows at on-/off-ramps. Therefore this subject must be studied more precisely. The existing of combined network of ordinary and dedicated lanes for freight transport is essential. In the other words, it would be not possible to assume a completely isolated network of dedicated freight lanes for freight transport system. Therefore, it expects that level of service for freight transport flows in this kind of dedicated lanes is completely different from ordinary highways and this difference may cause some discontinuity and perhaps some accidents at on-off ramps for merging or diverging the ACTs. Then how to regulate the traffic flow of ACTs on dedicated lanes when they intend to merge (or diverge) to (or from) traffic flow in ordinary highways and how to design the requested elements are both important to be analysed and solved. According to different levels of service, the entry and exit (ramps) segments, must be so designed that the interruption in flow traffic be minimised. It seems that the automated control of trucks on AFLs can provide this possibility that in each time. Different scenarios for controlling and directing of ACTs on dedicated lanes be analysed and relation to condition of traffic flow on ordinary highways the best option will be selected and adapted to ACTs. In this research it ‘s tried to develop a method for solving this problem. The selected procedure of this research for solving the above mentioned problem has the following steps: Step 1 : Focuses on analysis of different methods for how to direct the ACTs in dedicated freight lanes at on-/off-ramps; Step 2 : Different configurations and alternatives of on-off ramps will be analysed; Step 3 : The best mixed alternatives for control and design will be analysed and appropriate options will be selected. The research objectives of this thesis are: * To develop a dynamic traffic flow pattern based theory in automated freight lanes, which minimise the level of disruption in conjunction segments of manual/automated mode lanes; * Development of a micro-simulation traffic flow model for evaluation of different scenarios operation(related to above mentioned subject); * Determination of effective geometric design variables and parameters in the design of entry-exit segments. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting