Modeling and analysis of transportation networks using batches petri nets with controllable batch speed

Abstract

In road transportation networks, such as freeways, motorways or highways, variable speed limit (VSL) control is one of the most efficient strategies to substantially improve traffic flow and solve or reduce the congestion problem. One way to design control strategies applicable in real time is to represent the vehicle flows with a hybrid dynamic model. In this context, Batches Petri Nets (BPN) and their extensions, are well adapted for the modeling of such systems as they intend to model variable delays on continuous flows by adding special nodes, called batch nodes, to the continuous and hybrid Petri nets. Using BPN with controllable batch speed, this paper studies a portion of the A12 highway in The Netherlands. This hybrid representation leads to the evaluation of several real time VSL control laws in accordance with the accumulation front of vehicles. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.