Zip-merging behavior at Y-intersection based on intelligent travel points

Y-intersection is the traffic bottleneck of urban roads, which is mainly seen in the on-ramp and lane reduction road. As an effective way to solve the traffic congestion at Y-intersection, Zip-merging has been applied in some Chinese cities. In this paper, the Driving Order Game is selected as the decision-making model, and the Intelligent Travel Points (ITPs) based on driver behaviors are introduced to guide the drivers to cooperate spontaneously, so as to establish the guidance mechanism of Zip-merging at Y-intersection, which could be applied to the Driving Order Recommendation System. The agent-based model is used in the mechanism research. The behaviors of agents are affected by multiple parameters such as “Preference values for ITPs”, “passing time”. The results show that the Zip-merging can improve the traffic efficiency by 13.79% and ITPs can promote the cooperation between drivers. In addition, the good passing performance could be achieved by improving strong dependence of drivers on ITPs, while drivers are not required to have a high dependence on ITPs in the long term. DORS are designed with the maximum number of cars allowed to pass to maintain overall road efficiency, preferably set to 1 or 2. The results are helpful to realize the coordination of “physical layer–interaction layer–credit layer”, and provide theoretical support for the improvement of Cooperative Intelligent Transportation System.