Improved road-network-flow control strategy based on macroscopic fundamental diagrams and queuing length in connected-vehicle network

Abstract

Connected-vehicles network provides opportunities and conditions for improving traffic signal control, and macroscopic fundamental diagrams (MFD) can control the road network at the macrolevel effectively. This paper integrated proposed real-time access to the number of mobile vehicles and the maximum road queuing length in the Connected-vehicles network. Moreover, when implementing a simple control strategy to limit the boundary flow of a road network based on MFD, we determined whether the maximum queuing length of each boundary section exceeds the road-safety queuing length in real-time calculations and timely adjusted the road-network influx rate to avoid the overflow phenomenon in the boundary section. We established a road-network microtraffic simulation model in VISSIM software taking a district as the experimental area, determined MFD of the region based on the number of mobile vehicles, and weighted traffic volume of the road network. When the road network was tending to saturate, we implemented a simple control strategy and our algorithm limits the boundary flow. Finally, we compared the traffic signal control indicators with three strategies: (1) no control strategy, (2) boundary control, and (3) boundary control with limiting queue strategy. The results show that our proposed algorithm is better than the other two.