Institute of Transportation, MOTC

        As economic development and technological advancement, people usually rely on private vehicles as major means of transport due to the underdeveloped public transport systems to their workplace. As a result, congestion problems, which occur not only in urban area but on highway, become more and more severe. Highway connected to metropolitan area via interchanges where are usually congested, and even spillback happened, during morning and afternoon peak hour. Travel time of off-ramp traffic is the important information for users. When demand of off-ramp traffic increases and not discharges in time, the queue becomes longer. If the off-ramp travel information is disseminated at the upstream in time, there are more options for users to leaving highway. Once off-ramp traffic queue length exceed storage space, the spillback traffic will occupy space and affect the traffic on main lane of highway. The leaving vehicles usually cut in traffic line which cause accidents; meanwhile, users in queue line feel anxious because of congestion. This study will design a simulation software using intelligent transportation systems technology including computer vision and video processing. The software using signal timing plan on the plane road and the distance between spillback traffic and plane road can calculate the travel time of off-ramp traffic. The result provide users multiple options which are keeping queue or leaving at the next ramp. This study will be based on the case of the National Highway No. 1 Dawan South-bound Interchange.