An integrated control approach for traffic corridors

The paper presents a unified approach to the design of integrated control strategies for traffic corridors of arbitrary topology including both motorways and signal-controlled urban roads. The presented approach is based on suitable application of the store-and-forward modeling philosophy that leads to the formulation of a linear optimal-control problem involving a number of possible control actions, such as ramp metering, signal control, motorway-to-motorway control, route guidance, and VMS control. The control objective is minimisation of a common criterion, such as the total delay or the total time spent in the network. The formulated optimal-control problem may be resolved in real time using suitable algorithms to provide traffic-responsive queue management, particularly under saturated traffic conditions. The presentation of numerical results and case studies is to follow in subsequent publications.