Development of an Adaptive Corridor Traffic Control Model

This report documents work performed on PATH TO 5323. Due to an administrative mandate, the work performed and reported herein constitutes only the early stages of the multi-year project that was approved under PATH TO 5323, and subsequently divided into two distinct awards—TO 5323 and TO 6323. Moreover, a series of events during the early stages of the project substantially redirected the original effort. These factors led to a major redirection from the original project. The majority of the work performed under the revised TO 5323 was then to develop a methodology consistent with the new direction of the project, which is detailed in this report. Under the revised direction, the objective of the project is to develop and implement a real-time adaptive control system for corridor management. The proposed control strategy is based on a mathematical representation that describes the behavior of the real-life processes (traffic flow in corridor networks and actuated controller operation). In formulating the optimal control problem, we have restricted our attention to control of only those parameters commonly found in modern actuated controllers (e.g., Type 170 and 2070 controllers). By doing this, we hope to ensure that the procedures developed herein can be implemented with minimal adaptation of existing field devices and the software that controls their operation.