Research on Joint Control of On-Ramp Metering and Mainline Speed Guidance in the Urban Expressway Based on MPC and Connected Vehicles

The traffic operational efficiency of the urban expressway system will affect one of the entire cities. Moreover, the idea that traffic control can improve the traffic operational efficiency of the urban expressway system has been fully confirmed. At present, the main control methods include on-ramp metering and speed guidance control. However, there is a gap in using these two control methods together, such as unclear application conditions and unsystematic methods. In this paper, on-ramp metering and speed guidance control are combined effectively. Based on the research of METANET macroscopic traffic flow model and model predictive control (MPC), a novel joint control method based on MPC and connected vehicles (CVs) for on-ramp metering and speed guidance control of the urban expressway is proposed. Finally, the simulation results show that the proposed control method can effectively improve the traffic efficiency and traffic safety