Vehicles Platooning Behaviour and Level of Service on Indian Expressway

Abstract

Expressways in India are significantly different from other roads; however, surprisingly, some common phenomena, such as platooning, also occur on expressways just as they do on urban roads. This paper investigates the formation of vehicle platoons and their identification based on headway measurements. This paper examines the use of a critical or platooning headway to differentiate between platooned and free vehicles on roadways. Specifically, it investigates the determination of platooning headway for the Mumbai-Pune expressway in India, where frequent platoons are observed. Using the average coefficient of variation within a platoon method, a platooning headway of 1.3 seconds was found. The study focuses on the basic section of the expressway and uses video graphic data collected from high-resolution cameras during both peak and off-peak hours for over six hours. The study examines platoon formations and parameters, such as platoon rate and average vehicles per platoon, with respect to different traffic volume levels. The relationship between average platoon size and traffic volume is found to be exponential, while the relationship between platoon rate and directional volume is an inverse parabolic curve. Platoon frequency, heavy vehicle percentage, and other parameters are also studied, revealing that the presence of heavy vehicles and number of vehicles significantly affect the average speed of the platoon. Finally, new levels of service criteria based on platoon parameters are proposed.