Highway Traffic Control with Moving Bottlenecks of Connected and Automated Vehicles for Travel Time Reduction

The advancements in automotive industry in vehicles communication and automation can be efficiently exploited to introduce new traffic control and management methods. In this paper, a version of the Cell Transmission Model (CTM) incorporating the capacity drop phenomenon is used to model a human-driven vehicles traffic flow where vehicles equipped with Vehicles Automation and Communication Systems (VACS) are present. Connected and Automated Vehicle (CAV) are modeled as moving bottlenecks impacting on the surrounding traffic by reducing the free-flow speed of the overall traffic flow at their location. The speeds of the moving bottlenecks are assumed as control variables and a Model Predictive Control (MPC) approach is used in order to minimize travel times along the highway. The approach is assessed in simulations using a realistic case study.