Development of an Adaptive Corridor Traffic Control Model

This research develops and tests, via microscopic simulation, a real-time adaptive control system for corridor management in the form of three real-time adaptive control strategies: intersection control, ramp control and an integrated control that combines both intersection and ramp control. The development of these strategies is based on a mathematical representation that describes the behavior of traffic flow in corridor networks and actuated controller operation. Only those parameters commonly found in modern actuated controllers (e.g., Type 170 and 2070 controllers) are considered in the formulation of the optimal control problem. As a result, the proposed strategies easily could be implemented with minimal adaptation of existing field devices and the software that controls their operation. Microscopic simulation was employed to test and evaluate the performance of the proposed strategies in a calibrated network. Simulation results indicate that the proposed strategies are able to increase overall system performance and also the local performance on ramps and intersections. Prior to testing the complete model, separate tests were conducted to evaluate the intersection control model on: 1) an isolated intersection, and 2) a network of intersections along an arterial. The complete model was then tested and evaluated on the Alton Parkway/I-405 corridor network in Irvine, California. In testing the optimal control model, we simulated a variety of conditions on the freeway and arterial subsystems that cover the range of demand from peak to non-peak, incident to non-incident, conditions. The results of these experiments were evaluated against full-actuated operation and found to offer improved performance.