Integrated Control for Mixed CAV and CV Traffic Flow in Expressway Merge Zones Combined with Variable Speed Limit, Ramp Metering, and Lane Changing
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 149, Issue 2
Abstract
In the conventional human driving environment, due to poor traffic information transmission and the inability to actively control vehicles, variable speed limits (VSLs) and ramp metering (RM) strategies often fail to achieve the desired results when dealing with the merging zone of an expressway under high traffic demand. To improve traffic efficiency, an integrated control method for traffic flow in the merging area of expressways is proposed by combining connected and autonomous vehicle (CAV) active lane change (LC) technology with traditional VSL and entrance RM strategies. This method uses an upgraded cell transmission model (CTM) to estimate the state of the mainline and ramp input traffic volume and then uses the genetic algorithm (GA) to solve for the optimal combination of the mainline speed limit, number of mainline vehicles changing lanes, and ramp regulation under maximized flow in the merging zone. This integrated control strategy incorporating VSL, LC, and RM (VSL-LC-RM) enables synergistic control of the mainline and ramp traffic entering the merging zone in time-space. Finally, simulation experiments are conducted with the mainline two-lane and on-ramp single-lane expressway merging zone scenarios. The results show that compared with the VSL strategy and the strategy incorporating only VSL and RM (VSL-RM), the proposed VSL-LC-RM strategy can enhance the regulation of traffic flow, improve the flow of merging bottlenecks, and make full use of the road space-time resources.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
This research was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 52072108 and 51878236) and the Municipal Natural Science Foundation of HeFei (No. 2022020).
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Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 149 • Issue 2 • February 2023
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© 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 24, 2022
Accepted: Sep 30, 2022
Published online: Nov 26, 2022
Published in print: Feb 1, 2023
Discussion open until: Apr 26, 2023
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