Freeway corridor traffic flow is limited by bottleneck flow. If the section upstream of a bottleneck is congested, the bottleneck flow will drop well below its capacity. A logical approach to maximizing recurrent bottleneck flow is to create a discharge section immediately upstream of the bottleneck. This paper proposes a control strategy for combining variable speed limits (VSL) and coordinated ramp metering (CRM) design to achieve this objective when the bottleneck can be represented as a lane (or virtual lane) reduction. At each time step, VSL is designed first, with mainline flow, on-ramp demand and length, and driver acceptance taken into account. VSL values are determined for three locations: (a) the critical VSL to regulate the discharge section flow to match bottleneck capacity, (b) the VSL for the potentially congested section (mainline storage), and (c) the VSL upstream of the congestion tail. With the selected VSL, the first-order mainline flow model is linearized and then used for CRM design with model predictive control to minimize the difference between scaled total travel time (or vehicle hours traveled) and the total travel distance (equivalent to vehicle miles traveled). Microscopic simulation shows that this control strategy should improve bottleneck throughput significantly.


    Access

    Download

    Check availability in my library

    Order at Subito €


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Novel Freeway Traffic Control with Variable Speed Limit and Coordinated Ramp Metering


    Additional title:

    Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    2011-01-01




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English




    A new approach for combined freeway Variable Speed Limits and Coordinated Ramp Metering

    Xiao-Yun Lu, / Varaiya, P / Horowitz, R et al. | IEEE | 2010


    Freeway Traffic Flow Control with Anticipative Ramp Metering

    National Research Council (U.S.) | British Library Conference Proceedings | 2005


    Local and Optimal Coordinated Ramp Metering for Freeway Networks

    Kotsialos, Apostolos | Online Contents | 2005


    Global Versus Local MPC Algorithms in Freeway Traffic Control With Ramp Metering and Variable Speed Limits

    Frejo, José Ramón Domínguez / Camacho, Eduardo Fernández | IEEE | 2012