Optimal Coordination of Variable Speed Control and Ramp Metering Based on Stackelberg Game

Stackelberg game is applied to optimally coordinate variable speed control and ramp metering in order to relieve rush hour congestion on urban freeways in this paper. Variable speed control can stabilize and smooth traffic flow and improve traffic safety. Ramp metering can improve freeway flow and traffic safety by adjusting the metering rate. After the interaction between variable speed control and ramp metering is analyzed, we formulate variable speed control and ramp metering as a Stackelberg game with a leader and multi-follower. Variable speed control is regarded as the leader and on-ramps as the followers. Within this framework, we propose a Stackelberg game model of variable speed control and ramp metering. At last, we use a simple network to illustrate our approach and the simulation results show that this approach is effective.