Coordinated Variable Speed Limit, Ramp Metering and Lane Change Control of Highway Traffic

Integrated variable speed limit and ramp metering control for highway traffic is expected to smooth the traffic flow and improve the mobility of highway networks. Our recent results showed that variable speed limit control alone cannot eliminate capacity drops in many incident cases, where one or more lanes are closed due to microscopic phenomena such as forced lane changes and merging dynamics. In this paper, we developed a coordinated variable speed limit, ramp metering and lane change control which guarantees stability of the traffic flow and improves traffic mobility, safety and the environment. In the proposed control strategy, while the lane change control avoids the capacity drop, a feedback linearization variable speed limit controller coordinates with the ramp metering and stabilizes the bottleneck flow at the maximum level. Microscopic Monte-Carlo simulations demonstrate significant improvement on traffic mobility, safety and environment by using the proposed controller. (C) 2017, IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control) Hosting by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.