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This study investigates the drivers’ merging behavior in work zone merging areas during the entire merging implementation period from the time of starting a merging maneuver to that of completing the maneuver. With the actual work zone merging traffic data, we propose a time-dependent logistic regression model considering the possible time-varying effects of influencing factors, and a standard logistic regression model for the purpose of model comparison. Model comparison results show that the time-dependent model performs better than the standard model because the former can provide higher prediction accuracy. The time-dependent model results show that seven factors exhibit time-varying effects on the drivers’ merging behavior, including merging vehicle speed, through lane lead vehicle speed and through lane lag vehicle speed, longitudinal gap between the merging and lead vehicles, longitudinal gap between the merging and through lane lead vehicles, types of through lane lead and through lane lag vehicles. Interestingly, both the through lane lead vehicle speed and the through lane lag vehicle speed are found to exhibit heterogeneous effects at different times of the merging implementation period. One important finding from this study is that the merging vehicle has a decreasing willingness to take the choice of “complete a merging maneuver” as the elapsed time increases if the through lane lead vehicle is a heavy vehicle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to develop a maximum likelihood regression tree-based model to predict subway incident delays, which are major negative impacts caused by subway incidents from the commuter’s perspective. Using the Hong Kong subway incident data from 2005 and 2009, a tree comprising 10 terminal nodes is selected to predict subway incident delays in a case study. An accelerated failure time (AFT) analysis is conducted separately for each terminal node. The goodness-of-fit results show that our developed model outperforms the traditional AFT models with fixed and random effects because it can overcome the heterogeneity problem and over-fitting effects. The developed model is beneficial for subway engineers looking to propose effective strategies for reducing subway incident delays, especially in super-large-sized cities with huge public travel demand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Provide a critical review on the approaches to estimating work zone capacity and traffic delay in work zones. [•] Identify the limitations and shortcomings of these approaches. [•] Provide some directions and recommendations for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: To mitigate the negative traffic impact caused by work zones, land transport authorities usually impose constraints on queue length and travel delay. In reality, a single or multiple subwork zone strategy can be adopted to mitigate queue length and travel delay. However, contractors conducting work projects are only concerned with the minimization of the total maintenance cost. From the contractor’s standpoint, this study proposes a total maintenance cost minimization model to determine the optimal subwork zone length and project start time, subject to queue length and travel delay constraints. Using average hourly traffic (AHT) data, this study shows that total user delay is non-differentiable with respect to the subwork zone length and project start time. This interesting finding demonstrates that previous analytic expressions of the optimal subwork zone length cannot hold for AHT data. To solve the proposed model, an enumeration method is designed. Finally, a numerical example created from the roadside tree trimming in Singapore is used to assess the model and solution method proposed in this study. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper aims to develop an improved cellular automata (ICA) model for simulating heterogeneous traffic in work zone. The proposed ICA model includes the forwarding rules to update longitudinal speeds and positions of work zone vehicles. The randomization probability parameter used by the ICA is formulated as a function of the activity length, the transition length and the volumes of different types of vehicles traveling across work zone. Compared to the existing cellular automata models, the ICA model possesses a novel and realistic lateral speed and position updating rule so that the simulation of vehicle’s lateral movement in work zone is close to the reality. The ICA model is calibrated and validated microscopically and macroscopically by using the real work zone data. Comparisons of field data and ICA for trajectories, speed and speed–flow relationship in work zone show very close agreement. Finally, the proposed ICA model is applied to estimate traffic delay occurred in work zone. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper aims to investigate the speed-flow relationship and drivers’ merging behavior in work zone merging areas. It first proposes lane-based speed-flow models, incorporating traffic conflicts among the lanes. It proceeds to develop a desired merging location model determining where drivers start to consider merging and a binary logit model that is applied to estimate the probabilities that drivers will merge into current adjacent gaps. A merging distance model is also proposed to find the 85th percentile of the merging distance. Finally, real work zone traffic data in Singapore are used to calibrate and evaluate the developed models. The findings show that the speed-flow relationship in the through lane is affected by the merge lane traffic under uncongested circumstances. Satisfactory results indicate that the merging behavioral models can competently predict drivers’ merging behavior and that the merging distance model could provide accurate information for traffic engineers to calculate the merge lane length. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]