  Emerging vehicle automation and communication systems (VACS) may contribute
to the improvement of vehicle travel time and the mitigation of motorway
traffic congestion on the basis of appropriate control strategies. This work
considers the possibility that automated, or semi-automated, vehicles are
equipped with devices that perform (or recommend) lane-changing tasks. The
lane-changing strategy MOBIL (minimizing overall braking induced by lane
changing) has been chosen for its simplicity and ductility, as well as for the
reduced number of parameters that need to be specified (namely, politeness
factor and threshold). A wide set of simulations, where MOBIL has been
implemented within the microscopic traffic simulator Aimsun for a calibrated
motorway network (representing a stretch of motorway A12 in the Netherlands),
has been performed. Simulations revealed the impact that the choice of
different parameters have on the travel time of different vehicles, allowing
also to analyse their behaviour with respect to different traffic conditions
(without or with traffic congestion).
