ILRSH: Intelligent lane reservation system for highway(s)

Highways tend to get congested because of the increase in the number of cars travelling on them. There are two solutions to this. The first one, which is also expensive, consists in building new highways to support the traffic. A much cheaper alternative consists in the introduction of advanced ITC software control systems to support the traffic and increase the efficiency of the already existing highways. ILRSH is such a software control system. It is designed to assist and automate the use of a highway lane as a reserved lane. The idea is to allow and support drivers to travel at a high speed, if in return they are willing to pay a small fee to reserve an empty virtual slot on the reserved lane. This slot is valid for a portion and of the highway and a time window, so each driver pays the fee depending on its travelling needs. In return, drivers are guaranteed a congestion free travel on that portion. In this paper we present the proposed architecture of the ILRSH and its subsystems. The system is based on several proposed algorithms designed to assist the drivers enter or exit the reserved lane, based on real-world driving observations. We present simulation results showing the feasibility of the proposed approach, and the increase in traffic efficiency.