The effects of accelerating lane in the on-ramp system

Usually there is an accelerating lane as an on-ramp merges with the main road. How the length of this section and the traffic regulations influence the traffic behaviors has seldom been investigated. In this paper, we study this issue using the cellular automata traffic flow model. We find that (i) the permission of lane changing from main road to the accelerating lane will deteriorate the capacity of the road, hence it should be forbidden; (ii) when lane changing from main road to accelerating lane is forbidden, the introduction of an accelerating lane can improve the capacity of the on-ramp system.