Modeling vehicle merging behavior in urban expressway merging sections based on logistic model

In order to represent vehicles merging behavior accurately in urban expressway merging sections, and overcome the shortcomings of existing models, firstly, a typical merging section in Guangzhou is selected to investigate field data, and the video processing software VEVID is used to get larger amounts of vehicle trajectory data. Then a lot of factors that affect vehicle merging behaviors are analyzed, and a logistic model that is applied to estimate the probabilities that driver will merge into adjacent gaps is built. Finally, the microscopic traffic simulation system MTSS is taken as simulation platform to build merging simulation model, the real merging section traffic data in Guangzhou is used to calibrate and validate the merging probability model, the output results from the simulation system are compared with field data, the satisfactory results indicates that the built merging simulation model can be used to describe the complex driver behaviors of merging sections.