A case study of active traffic control: Improving efficiency of the traffic operations using ramp metering system

The design, deployment and evaluation of effective traffic control strategies have been considered critical tasks in congestion mitigation. The modern technology allows us to build the active traffic control technologies based on traffic state prediction and network-wide optimization. However, such new generation of control methodology come up with the increased complexity and need to be carefully calibrated /evaluated before the implementation. In this paper, base on a benchmark case study of implementing the active ramp metering control on a freeway corridor, we make use of the software platform to simulate both the traffic control strategies and the interactions of the traffics. A selection of ramp metering strategies are optimized and evaluated to determine which one is the most suitable solution for the studied corridor. Such advices could help the designers and operators of the highway in the decision make progress before the actual field implementation.