Hidden Markov Model-Based Dynamic Hard Shoulders Running Strategy in Hybrid Network Environments

Abstract

With the development of vehicle-road network technologies, the future traffic flow will appear in the form of hybrid network traffic flow for a long time. Due to the change in traffic characteristics, the current hard shoulder running strategy based on traditional traffic characteristics cannot effectively serve the hybrid network traffic flow scenario, and will even lead to the further deterioration of traffic congestion. In order to propose a hard shoulder running strategy suitable for a hybrid network environment, a traffic breakdown prediction method based on a hidden Markov model was established. Secondly, the characteristics of traffic breakdown in a hybrid network environment were analyzed. Finally, based on the traffic breakdown characteristics in a hybrid network environment, a dynamic hard shoulder running method based on the hidden Markov model was proposed. The effectiveness of HMMD-HSR was verified by simulation and comparison with HMM-HSR, LMD-HSR, and N-HSR. The simulation results show that the HMMD-HSR proposed in this paper can improve operation efficiency and reduce travel time in a congested expressway.

Keywords

• hybrid network environments
• breakdown probability
• discrete time hidden Markov chain
• active traffic management
• hard shoulder running