A nonlinear optimal control approach for two-class freeway traffic regulation to reduce congestion and emissions

This paper proposes a freeway traffic controller with the objective of minimizing, at the same time, congestion phenomena and traffic emissions. A multi-class framework is considered in the paper, i.e two classes of vehicles (cars and trucks) are explicitly modelled and specific control actions for each vehicle class are computed. The controller is based on the formulation and solution of a constrained discrete-time nonlinear optimal control problem for which a specific solution algorithm, the feasible direction algorithm, is used. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is shown and discussed in the paper by means of some simulation results.