Capacity drops at merges: New analytical investigations

This paper focuses on the derivation of analytical formulae to estimate the effective capacity at freeway merges. It extends previous works by proposing a generic framework able to account for a refined description of the physical interactions between upstream waves and downstream voids created by inserting vehicles within the merge area. The provided analytical formulae permits to directly and accurately compute the capacity values when the merge is self-active, i.e. when both upstream roads are congested while downstream traffic conditions are free-flow.