Empirical study on variable lanes design of Chaoyang North Street in Beijing

Variable lanes strategy is an effective approach to deal with the road usage imbalance due to tide traffic. This paper analyzed the causes of traffic congestion in Chaoyang North Street in Beijing during morning rush hours. A bi-level programming model was proposed to describe lane reversible strategies with the objective of the minimum total system cost. The upper level was to minimize the total road network resistance by reversing lanes, the lower level followed stochastic user equilibrium assignment principle for travelers to choose travel path. The effect of traffic information acceptance level on variable lanes design was analyzed. The results show that, the fuller information about traffic condition travelers get, the better implementation of variable lanes strategy. The application of variable lanes strategy can reduce the volume to capacity ratio (v/c) to below 1 in the into town direction of Chaoyang North Street, relieve traffic congestion effectively during morning rush hours, decrease the total road resistance by 22.89%, increase the average travel speed by 6.71%, reduce the average unit vehicle delay by 11.81% and improve the traffic condition in road network conspicuously.