Mainstream traffic flow control at sags

Abstract

Sags are freeway sections along which the gradient changes significantly from downwards to upwards. The capacity of sags is significantly lower than the capacity of normal sections. As a result, sags often become bottlenecks in freeway networks, causing the formation of congestion in conditions of high traffic demand. Congestion results in a further decrease in capacity. Recently, several control measures have been proposed to improve traffic flow efficiency at sags. Those measures generally aim to increase the capacity of the bottleneck and/or to prevent the formation of traffic flow perturbations in nearly-saturated conditions. In this contribution, we present an alternative type of measure based on the concept of mainstream traffic flow control. The proposed control strategy regulates the traffic density at the bottleneck area in order to keep it slightly below the critical density, hence preventing traffic from breaking down while maximizing outflow. Density is regulated by means of a variable speed limit section that regulates the inflow to the bottleneck. Speed limits are set based on a proportional feedback control law. We evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy by means of a simple case study using microscopic traffic simulation. The results show a significant increase in bottleneck outflow, particularly during periods of very high demand, which leads to a considerable decrease in total delay. This finding suggests that mainstream traffic flow control strategies using variable speed limits have the potential to substantially improve the performance of freeway networks containing sags.