Development and Evaluation of Optimal Arterial Control Strategies for Oversaturated Conditions

Abstract

Oversaturated conditions present an additional burden for practitioners because of the lack of adequate optimization tools for addressing such situations. In contrast to undersaturated conditions, congested conditions require careful consideration and analysis of the underlying causes before mitigation strategies can be developed. This paper presents a framework for developing optimal oversaturation control strategies that account for identification and mitigation of critical underlying causes (critical route and traffic pattern information). A proposed framework takes into account some basic underlying constraints as applied to cycle, offset, and split designs. Simulation results revealed that the proposed framework led to a significant improvement in system performance. Results also revealed that different control parameters in the optimal range improved some performance measures more than they did others.