Date of Graduation

2015

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MS

College

Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources

Department

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Committee Chair

Avinash Unnikrishnan

Committee Co-Chair

Radhey Sharma

Committee Member

Antarpreet Jutla

Abstract

Autonomous vehicles are expected to provide a number of benefits to the individual, road infrastructure and the society from the perspective of safety and efficiency. The use of autonomous vehicles is expected to increase freeway throughput, allowing vehicle groups travelling together with a shorter headway time resulting in a reduction of traffic congestion.;The purpose of this research was to use microsimulation software, VISSIM, to test the impact of autonomous vehicles on freeway throughput, delay, and travel time. A realistic corridor of I-79 and a conceptual corridor were modeled to understand how mixed traffic flow conditions could impact the freeway throughput. In addition, the same corridors were used to test the impact of various lane configurations on efficiency of mixed traffic flow including regular and autonomous vehicles.;Our results have shown that incorporation of autonomous vehicles with regular vehicles can increase the freeway throughput. The increase observed in our study has reached above 17% of freeway benefits with 60% or higher of autonomous vehicles penetration rate. However, using autonomous vehicles with lane configuration have shown a negative impact on freeway throughput. That is due to the congestion caused by regular vehicles mainly at the exits and entrances of the freeway.

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