Simulating the impacts of RFID enabled lanes at the Canada-us border: An application to the ambassador bridge

The use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology at border crossing facilities is believed to improve the performance and throughput of these facilities. However, the benefits of implementing RFID technology are highly dependent on the proportion of passenger vehicles and commercial carries that are able to take advantage of the RFID equipped lanes and as well as the number of RFID lanes that are available. This study simulates the potential benefits of using RFID technology under various scenarios that depict certain increases in the number of RFID equipped lanes. The movement of individual passenger and commercial vehicles, the interactions among them, and their passage through primary inspection and RFID enabled lanes at the Ambassador Bridge is simulated in the VISSIM micro-simulation traffic software. The conducted analysis evaluates the efficacy of using RFID technology to achieve a reduction in border-crossing time. A crossing time improvement of 7% is observed with the introduction of 3 RIFD enabled lanes.