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Abstract
Highway repaving and repairs often require that two (or more) lanes of traffic be
condensed into one lane around construction sites. As a rule, the merging process is unmanaged
which in peak periods results in a traffic queue at the bottleneck. Traffic moves through the
queue in a stop-and-go manner which increases travel time. This paper computes the amount of
time spent in the traffic queues which result when the behavior of drivers at bottlenecks is
unmanaged. It then explores a strategy for imposing order on driver behavior and determines the
reduction in queuing time that would result. An example shows that the value of the reduction
could be dramatic.