Congestion on the Dutch highway system has been increasing over the last years. Road sections that contribute to the emergence of congestion, are on-ramp merging areas. This is due to too many vehicles wanting to merge onto the main road. Coordinating this manoeuvre in an organized way, would reduce the consequences of too many vehicles wanting to merge on the main road. Ramp metering attempts to achieve this and it has been found that ramp metering systems indeed decrease the overall time spent in the system. Therefore, ramp metering systems are in place at various sites in the Netherlands. However, current ramp metering systems use a macroscopic view, even though ramp metering is a very delicate matter. Therefore, this project will investigate the consequences of changing the ramp metering systems to a microscopic view. This means taking into account the distance between individual vehicle. The project will focus on developing an algorithm for this and the assessment of this algorithm.
Start date: June 3, 2019
End date: May 12, 2020
Research topic:
Traffic management
Research question:
New traffic management measures
Report:
Ramp metering: A microscopic control approach – A case study in the Netherlands