Analysis of trip cost allowing late arrival in a traffic corridor with one entry and one exit under car-following model

In this paper, a generalized car-following model is proposed to investigate the trip cost of each commuter in a traffic corridor with one entry and one exit at equilibrium state. Trip cost consists of the travel time cost and the penalty cost of arriving at destination early or late. At equilibrium, all commuters experience identical trip cost regardless of their departure time. We use the full velocity difference (FVD) model to compute the trip cost of a commuter who leaves home at specific time, find a function to fit each commuter's time headway at the equilibrium state, and verify the fitted function from different perspectives. Finally, we utilize the fitted function of time headway to explore some extension cases (e.g., the number of commuters or the first commuter's departure time is changed). The paper has revealed some properties of the traffic corridor and proposed some methods to research the traffic corridor in deep from microscopic perspective, which can be easily extended to investigate complex traffic corridor problems and policy making.