A Novel Control-Oriented Cell Transmission Model Including Service Stations on Highways

In this paper, we propose a novel model that describes how the traffic evolution on a highway stretch is affected by the presence of a service station. The presented model enhances the classical Cell Transmission Model (CTM) dynamics by adding the dynamics associated with the service stations, where the vehicles may stop before merging back in the main stream. We name it Cell Transmission Model with service station (CTM-s). We discuss its flexibility in describing different complex scenarios where multiple stations are characterized by different drivers’ average stopping times corresponding to different services. The model has been developed to help designing control strategies aimed to decrease traffic congestion. Thus, we discuss how classical control schemes can interact with the proposed CTM-s. Finally, we demonstrate the proposed model through numerical simulations and assess the effects of service stations on traffic evolution, which appear to be beneficial especially for relatively short congested periods.