Anticipative ramp metering control using dynamic traffic assignment

We develop an anticipative model-based traffic control approach for ramp metering in freeway networks. If ramp metering is implemented in a freeway network with alternative routes, traffic can spontaneously re-route due to the response of the drivers to the applied control actions. Although spontaneous re-routing can have a significant influence on the resulting traffic situation in the traffic network and on the performance of the traffic network as a whole, re-routing is usually not automatically included in the current freeway traffic control frameworks. We develop a new method to efficiently calculate and incorporate re-routing effects into a model-based predictive traffic control framework. In this way, anticipative model predictive control for ramp metering in freeway networks is realized.