Developing an area-wide system for coordinated ramp meter control.

Details

• Creators:
  Wang, Yinhai ; Perrine, Kenneth A. ; Lao, Yunteng
• Corporate Creators:
  Transportation Northwest Regional Center X (TransNow) (UTC)
• Corporate Contributors:
  University of Washington ; United States. Department of Transportation
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  • Ramp metering
  • Freeway management systems
  • Advanced traffic management systems
• Publication/ Report Number:
  TNW2008-11
• Resource Type:
  Tech Report
• Geographical Coverage:
  United States
• Edition:
  Final report; Dec. 2008
• Corporate Publisher:
  Transportation Northwest (TransNow) UTC
• Abstract:
  Ramp metering has been broadly accepted and deployed as an effective countermeasure ; against both recurrent and non-recurrent congestion on freeways. However, many current ramp ; metering algorithms tend to improve only freeway travels using local detectors’ inputs and ; overlook the negative impacts on local streets. This may generate two problems: 1) the optimal ; local settings may not result in a system-wide optimum in terms of traffic operations; and 2) the ; increased congestion on local streets due to on-ramp overflow may counteract the gains in ; freeway operations. To address these problems, we propose an area-wide ramp metering system ; to improve the coordination of ramp meters for system-wide optimization and on-ramp overflow ; minimization. Our experimental results show that our method can offer improved performance in ; ramp metering operations under tested scenarios and also reduce the likelihood of on-ramp ; overflow. ; This novel strategy for active ramp metering is inspired by the principles of a computer ; network congestion control strategy. In this strategy, certain types of congestion at a targeted ; freeway location can be significantly reduced by limiting on-ramp vehicle flows to a fraction of ; ramp demand and then additively increasing rates to avoid ramp queue spillover onto city streets. ; This approach can be actively used to immediately curb the growth of traffic congestion and ; therefore shorten travel delays. The effectiveness of this ramp metering approach has been ; evaluated by microscopic simulation experiments. Our experimental results show that our ; method can reduce system-wide travel delays in the tested scenarios by as much as 28.2% when ; compared with the Fuzzy Logic ramp metering algorithm, and also reduce the frequency and ; severity of on-ramp overflow. This indicates that this area-wide algorithm can provide benefit ; when applied to urban freeway corridors for congestion mitigation.
  More +
• Format:
  PDF
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/17235/dot_17235_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 380.52 KB]
• Collection(s):
  University Transportation Centers ; US Transportation Collection
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:6f3bd0e9b860333337036f752aa9627ee68d3ce40663971bc2cde4745814ef9ac2b849dbd9c20cdf7b0764f9b575c6e7818c3d467687358686be98a19f3be818