The random nature of traffic conditions on freeways can cause excessive congestions and irregularities in the traffic flow. Ramp metering is a proven effective method to maintain freeway efficiency under various traffic conditions. Creating a reliable and practical ramp metering algorithm that considers both critical traffic measures and historical data is still a challenging problem. In this study we use machine learning approaches to develop a novel real-time prediction model for ramp metering. We evaluate the potentials of our approach in providing promising results by comparing it with a baseline traffic-responsive ramp metering algorithm.
The aim of ramp metering is to improve the highway traffic conditions by an appropriate regulation of the inflow from the on-ramps to the highway mainstream. Our presentation rests on several improvements: 1) Our simulation techniques do not need contrarily to other approaches any heuristic fundamental law. 2) There is no need of crucial time-varying quantities, like the critical density, which is most difficult to estimate correctly online. 3) Our feedback loop, which is stemming from model-free control, is easy to implement and shows an excellent robustness with respect to model mismatch. Se…
Ramp metering is one of the most effective tools to combat traffic congestion. In this paper, we present a ramp metering policy for a network of freeways with arbitrary number of on- and off-ramps, merge, and diverge junctions. The proposed policy is designed at the microscopic level and takes into account vehicle following safety constraints. In addition, each on-ramp operates in cycles during which it releases vehicles as long as the number of releases does not exceed its queue size at the start of the cycle. Moreover, each on-ramp dynamically adjusts its release rate based on the traffic co…
Freeway ramp metering control made easy and efficient
Univ. Lille Nord France（法国北部里尔大学）；U-Artois, LGI2A (EA 3926)（阿图瓦大学，LGI2A实验室）；LIX (CNRS, UMR 7161), École polytechnique（巴黎综合理工学院，LIX实验室）；CETE Nord-Picardie（北方-皮卡第城市交通与技术中心）；INRIA – Non-A & CRAN (CNRS, UMR 7039) Université de Lorraine（洛林大学，INRIA与CRAN实验室）；AL.I.E.N.（AL.I.E.N.公司）
Effective traffic control methods have great potential in alleviating network congestion. Existing literature generally focuses on a single control approach, while few studies have explored the effectiveness of integrated and coordinated control approaches. This study considers two representative control approaches: ramp metering for freeways and perimeter control for homogeneous urban roads, and we aim to develop a deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based coordinated control framework for large-scale networks. The main challenges are 1) there is a lack of efficient dynamic models for both free…
Ramp metering, a traditional traffic control strategy for conventional vehicles, has been widely deployed around the world since the 1960s. On the other hand, the last decade has witnessed significant advances in connected and automated vehicle (CAV) technology and its great potential for improving safety, mobility and environmental sustainability. Therefore, a large amount of research has been conducted on cooperative ramp merging for CAVs only. However, it is expected that the phase of mixed traffic, namely the coexistence of both human-driven vehicles and CAVs, would last for a long time. S…
Highway capacity is often subject to stochastic perturbations due to the combined effects of weather, traffic mixture, driver behavior, etc. This paper is motivated by the need of a systematic approach to traffic control with performance guarantees in the face of such perturbations. We develop a novel control-theoretic method for designing perturbation-resilient ramp metering. We consider a cell-transmission model with 1) Markovian cell capacities and 2) buffers representing on-ramps and upstream mainline. Using this model, we analyze the stability of on-ramp queues by constructing piecewise L…
Our current transportation system suffers from a number of problems in terms of safety, mobility, and environmental sustainability. The emergence of innovative intelligent transportation systems (ITS) technologies, and in particular connected and automated vehicles (CAVs), provides many opportunities to address the aforementioned issues. In this paper, we propose a hierarchical ramp merging system that not only generates microscopic cooperative maneuvers for CAVs on the ramp to merge into the mainline traffic flow, but also provides controllability of the ramp inflow rate, thereby enabling mac…
Steady-state process models are common in virtual flow meter applications due to low computational complexity, and low model development and maintenance cost. Nevertheless, the prediction performance of steady-state models typically degrades with time due to the inherent nonstationarity of the underlying process being modeled. Few studies have investigated how learning methods can be applied to sustain the prediction accuracy of steady-state virtual flow meters. This paper explores passive learning, where the model is frequently calibrated to new data, as a way to address nonstationarity and i…
MARL-FWC: Optimal Coordination of Freeway Traffic Control Measures
Cyber-Physical Systems Lab（智能物理系统实验室）；Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology (E-JUST)（埃及-日本科学技术大学）；Faculty of Engineering (Shoubra)（工程学院（舒卜拉））；Benha University（班纳大学）；Faculty of Engineering（工程学院）；Alexandria University（亚历山大大学）
Effective traffic optimization strategies can improve the performance of transportation networks significantly. Most exiting works develop traffic optimization strategies depending on the local traffic states of congested road segments, where the congestion propagation is neglected. This paper proposes a novel distributed traffic optimization method for urban freeways considering the potential congested road segments, which are called potential-homogeneous-area. The proposed approach is based on the intuition that the evolution of congestion may affect the neighbor segments due to the mobility…
Capacity drop is an empirically observed phenomenon in vehicular traffic flow on freeways whereby, after a critical density is reached, a state of congestion sets in, but the freeway does not become decongested again until the density drops well below the critical density. This introduces a hysteresis effect so that it is easier to enter the congested state than to leave it. However, many existing first-order models of traffic flow, particularly those used for control design, ignore capacity drop, leading to suboptimal controllers. In this paper, we consider a cell transmission model of traffi…
