Research on A Collaborative Control Strategy of An Urban Expressway Merging Bottleneck Area

Abstract

The conflict between the mainline and incoming traffic flow in the merging area of an urban expressway makes it easier to form a traffic bottleneck than the basic road section. When the merging bottleneck occurs, the overall efficiency is affected. This paper establishes an improved Cell Transmission Model (CTM) using Genetic Algorithms (GA) and Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) for parameter calibration and validation. Based on the joint optimization goal of efficiency and safety, a collaborative control strategy is established. The strategy is verified by VISSIM. The results show that the total travel time is reduced by 7.34%, and the total turnover is increased by 6.06% by applying the collaborative control strategy during the peak period. Therefore, the cooperative control strategy of the merging bottleneck proposed can improve the traffic state at the merging bottleneck and improve the efficiency and safety level of the expressway.

Keywords

• urban expressway
• merging bottleneck area
• improved CTM
• cooperative control strategy
• traffic engineering