Modeling and Predicting Stochastic Merging Behaviors at Freeway On-Ramp Bottlenecks
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Merging behavior is inevitable at on-ramp bottlenecks and is a significant factor in triggering traffic breakdown. In modeling merging behaviors, the gap acceptance theory is generally used. Gap acceptance theory holds that when a gap is larger than the critical gap, the vehicle will merge into the mainline. In this study, however, analyses not only focus on the accepted gaps, but also take the rejected gaps into account, and the impact on merging behavior with multi-rejected (more than once rejecting behavior) gaps was investigated; it shows that the multi-rejected gaps have a great influence on the estimation of critical gap and merging prediction. Two empirical trajectory data sets were collected and analyzed: one at Yan’an Expressway in Shanghai, China, and the other at Highway 101 in Los Angeles, USA. The study made three main contributions. First, it gives the quantitative measurement of the rejected gap which is also a detailed description of non-merging event and investigated the characteristics of the multi-rejected gaps; second, taking the multi-rejected gaps into consideration, it further expanded the concept of the “critical gap” which can be a statistic one and the distribution function of merging probability with respect to such gaps was analyzed by means of survival analysis. This way could make the full use of multi-rejected gaps and accepted gaps and reduce the sample bias, thus estimating the critical gap accurately; finally, considering multi-rejected gaps, it created logistic regression models to predict merging behavior. These models were tested using field data, and satisfactory performances were obtained.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".