Freeway Traffic Oscillations and Vehicle Lane-Change Maneuvers

This work unveils the influence of vehicular lane-change maneuvers on oscillations in real freeway traffic. Measurements made upstream of bottlenecks reveal that oscillations formed in individual lanes when drivers squeezed their way in from neighboring lanes. Once oscillations had formed, moreover, lane changing caused the oscillations to at times grow in amplitude as they propagated upstream through queues. The findings how that on multi-lane freeways where lane changing abounds, these maneuvers seemingly exert greater influence on the formation and growth than do driver interactions that spontaneously arise in single-lane traffic. This is notable in light of many attempts to explain oscillations as strictly a car-following phenomenon; and the findings motivate the need for theories of multi-lane traffic that describe lane changing in conjunction with car following.