Arterial Intersection Improvement by Using Vehicle Platooning and Coordinated Start

Intersections are the bottlenecks of the urban arterial causing the reduction of its capacity. In order to maximize the efficiency of existing transportation systems capacity with urban congestion reduction, intelligent transportation systems are employed. In this paper, such a solution is presented using the cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) of vehicle platoons waiting at a red traffic signal which enables thus to begin accelerating in a coordinated manner once the traffic signal turns green. This coordinated start could allow more vehicles to pass through an intersection on a green cycle than manual driving and thus increasing the urban arterial capacity. To design and evaluate the CACC system, a novel simulator for connected vehicle applications is developed. The simulation results show that the proposed CACC approach offers significant mobility.