01519694

Component

https://doi.org/10.3141/2435-02

http://scholar.google.com...+Qiu&publication_year=2014

An increasing number of vehicles on roadways has made traffic safety a serious challenge for transportation engineers. For the mitigation of traffic safety concerns, a variety of active traffic control measures, such as the variable speed limit (VSL), have been intensively investigated and deployed. VSL is usually adopted to advise drivers of a lower speed limit that is more appropriate to a congested traffic condition and takes advantage of the homogeneous traffic flow effect. However, in earlier studies, because of the absence of traffic state prediction, the impact of applied VSL control was not quantitatively analyzed. In this study, a model predictive control framework was adopted for predicting and assessing future traffic states. Taking into consideration the impact of VSL control, the study used a macroscopic traffic flow model. The collision probabilities of the predicted traffic states were assessed with a precursor-based collision prediction model to determine the optimized control signal. With this design, the proposed algorithm controller provided a robust method for determining the VSL control plan to optimize safety performance over a traffic network. The proposed control algorithm was evaluated with a simulation study based on field data that was conducted to reproduce a major ring road in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The proposed algorithm was used to implement VSL control on the studied 11-km freeway stretch. The proposed algorithm control scenario was then compared with the uncontrolled scenario. The evaluation proved that the proposed VSL control algorithm could effectively reduce the probability for collisions in a congested traffic network without significantly compromising mobility.

01543434

14-1568

English

pp 11–18

2014

Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board

9780309295246

Print

Figures (4) ; References (19) ; Tables (1)

Algorithms; Crash risk forecasting; Highway safety; Highway traffic control; Macroscopic traffic flow; Mathematical prediction; Optimization; Traffic crashes; Traffic safety; Variable speed limits

Active traffic management; Model predictive control; Traffic state estimation

Edmonton (Canada)

Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; Safety and Human Factors; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning; I73: Traffic Control; I83: Accidents and the Human Factor

PRP, TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Jan 27 2014 2:35PM

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