Simulation of vehicle guidance in highway bottlenecks

This simulation study examines effects of a traffic operation strategy that controls propagation speed of traffic waves. The propagation speed of traffic waves are altered by requesting the mainline traffic to travel at speeds posted on the variable speed signs located before and throughout a highway bottleneck. A control strategy which guides the vehicles before reaching the bottleneck is compared with the common practice of not-guiding. When the traffic was guided, the congestion was eliminated faster; some improvements on overall traffic speed and throughput was observed; and the number of vehicles affected by the incident and the duration of the incident was decreased. The overall travel time and delay did not increase due to the guiding strategy. The approach can be incorporated into Intelligent Vehicle-Highway Systems (IVHS) or into real-time traffic control systems. An algorithm needs to be developed to determine the optimal speeds and sign spacings for different traffic conditions.