Platooning at Traffic Lights A microscopic simulation study

Congested roads not only lead to inattentive and inpatient drivers, but also have a significant negative economic impact. Especially during rush hour traffic at traffic light regulated intersections, inefficient cycle plans and the increased demand raise the need for mechanisms that increase the traffic efficiency. This paper presents a rule based algorithm for realizing platooning at traffic lights, in order to increase the throughput and to reduce the shock wave effect commonly observed at intersections. The algorithm makes use of Vehicle-2-X (V2X) communication technologies, by actively exchanging messages between the vehicles in order to set up the platoon. As a distinction to related work, the algorithm focuses on mixed traffic, in which not all vehicles are necessarily equipped with V2X technologies. The algorithm is implemented into an holistic simulation framework in order to study the effects of the parameters of the algorithm on the traffic efficiency.