Evaluation of Ramp Metering Impacts on Travel Time Reliability and Traffic Operations through Simulation

Abstract

Ramp metering has been found to improve traffic conditions on the freeway mainline by breaking the platoons of ramp vehicles minimizing turbulence at the merge locations. The majority of the ramp metering evaluation studies have examined traffic performance under specific demand conditions, whereas travel time reliability and variability aspects have not been adequately addressed. This paper focuses on evaluating two well-known ramp metering algorithms in terms of travel time reliability as well as other performance measures such as queue lengths, throughput, and congestion duration, looking at a wide range of traffic demands throughout a calendar year. The evaluation was done through simulating an 8-mile corridor in Kansas City, KS. The results showed localized improvements due to ramp metering at the northern section of the facility, in terms of travel time reliability, throughput, and congestion duration. It was also shown that ramp metering may cause a new (possibly "hidden") bottleneck to occur downstream, thus diluting its overall benefits when looking at an entire freeway facility. It is further noted that although ALINEA performed better than HERO on the mainline, traffic operations on the on-ramps significantly deteriorated using isolated control.