A platoon regulation algorithm to improve the traffic performance of highway work zones

This paper presents a cooperative traffic control strategy to increase the capacity of nonrecurrent bottlenecks such as work zones by making full use of the spatial resources upstream of work zones. The upstream area is divided into two zones: the regulation and the merging areas. The basic logic is that a large gap is more efficient in accommodating merging vehicles than several small and scattered gaps with the same total length. In the regulation area, a nonlinear programming model is developed to balance both traffic capacity improvements and safety risks. A two-step solving algorithm is proposed for finding optimal solutions. In the merging area, the sorting algorithm is used to design lane-changing trajectories based on the regulated platoons. A case study is conducted, and the results indicate that the proposed model is able to significantly improve work zone capacity with minor disturbances to the traffic.