Traffic Flow Optimisation at Sags by Controlling the Acceleration of Some Vehicles

Sags are bottlenecks in freeway networks. Nowadays, there is a growing interest in the development of traffic management measures for sags based on the use of in-car systems. This contribution determines the movements that individual (equipped) vehicles should make in order to minimise congestion. Specifically, we optimise the accelerations of some selected vehicles as they move along a one-lane freeway stretch with a sag, setting as objective the minimisation of total travel time. The optimisation results highlight the relevance of two traffic management strategies: a) motivating drivers to accelerate fast along sags; and b) limiting the inflow to sags. Also, they suggest ways to apply these strategies in practice by regulating the acceleration of vehicles equipped with in-car systems. These results prove the usefulness of the proposed method as a tool for control measure development.