A study on minimum time regulation of a bounded congested road with upstream flow control

This article is motivated by the practical problem of controlling traffic flow by imposing restrictive boundary conditions. For a one-dimensional congested road segment, we study the minimum time control problem of how to control the upstream vehicular flow appropriately to regulate the downstream traffic into a desired (constant) free flow state in minimum time. We consider the Initial-Boundary Value Problem (IBVP) for a scalar nonlinear conservation law, associated to the Lighthill-Whitham-Richards (LWR) Partial Differential Equation (PDE), where the left boundary condition, also treated as a valve for the traffic flow from the upstream, serves as a control. Besides, we set absorbing downstream boundary conditions. We prove first a comparison principle for the solutions of the considered IBVP, subject to comparable initial, left and right boundary data, which provides estimates on the minimal time required to control the system. Then we consider a (sub-) optimal control problem and we give numerical results based on Godunov scheme. The article serves as a starting point for studying time-optimal boundary control of the LWR model and for computing numerical results.