Feasibility Analysis of Proactive Control Method for Expressway Toll Stations

Balancing the traffic demand and supply of toll station is the key to alleviating toll station’s congestion. In the previous study, a proactive traffic control method integrating dynamic lane configuration and variable speed limit was developed in the framework of model Predictive control (MPC). In order to verify this method’s feasibility in multiple scenarios, three sets of requirements were set for traffic flow input. Lane markers were set at different distances from the start line of lane change, and different drivers’ compliance levels were set by Vissim to study the impacts of driver decision position and compliance levels on the control scheme. This paper defined 15 scenarios with the combination of variables; the total travel time (TTT) and average speed of traffic flow were compared to validate the control effect. The results show that the scheme can increase the average speed and reduce the total travel time under different demand scenarios.