Lane-Based Network for Flow Analysis and Inventory Management of Transportation Networks

The widely accepted link–node centerline network model inhibits lane-based traffic analysis and inventory management, specifically the ability to represent the availability of lanes, individual lane properties, connectivity among parallel lanes and at turns, and lane movement restrictions. A lane-based network overcomes the limitations by maintaining lanes as independent topological objects and thus supports data management, decision making, and network analysis at the lane level. The data model for a lane-based network uses a directed graph approach in which a set of unidirectional lanes and nodes is used to model traffic flow connectivity. The model manages the continuous lateral connectivity between parallel lanes by specifying the relative lateral position of the lanes on their parent roadways. This approach provides an efficient way to maintain lane topology and eliminates the requirement of turntables. This paper presents the model along with guidelines for lane-based inventory management and strategies for discretizing continuous lateral connectivity between parallel lanes to enable the use of existing routing algorithms (e.g., Dijkstra's). Finally, the paper presents a practical implementation built on the linear location referencing system of a state department of transportation.