Abstract: A considerable interference is associated with the lane-changing behavior in a traffic system that can significantly restrict the smooth and efficient operation of the traffic system.Therefore,a two-stage vehicle lane-changing model is developed based on inter-vehicle communication to solve this issue.Herein,the lane-changing behavior of vehicles in real-time traffic is analyzed based on the NGSIM data,and the two-stage vehicle lane-changing model is presented.The first stage of the model considers six factors that affect the lane-changing behavior,and a binary logit model is considered to estimate the lane-changing probability;the second stage uses safety conditions to determine whether the vehicle lane-changing model is implemented.Further,accurate real-time traffic status information is obtained from the first stage of the vehicle lane-changing model for the connected vehicles,and a corresponding lane-changing strategy is developed.The effects of different lane-changing strategies on the traffic flow are analyzed using numerical simulations.The results denote that the lane-changing model based on inter-vehicle communication considers the speed and position information of a large number of vehicles in the current and target lanes.The utility function causes the vehicle’s lane-changing behavior to consider the average speed and average distance in an extensive range and is not limited to the local utility of the traffic conditions in the nearest neighbors.Therefore,the lane-changing strategy based on inter-vehicle communication considerably inhibits the frequency of the lane-changing behaviors and the generated interference,promoting the efficiency of the road transportation systems.

Key words: intelligent transportation, lane-changing strategy, numerical simulation, inter-vehicle communication, traffic flow