A Jam-Absorption Driving Strategy for Mitigating Traffic Oscillations

Abstract

To mitigate traffic oscillations that usually sustainably propagate upstream, this paper proposes a jam-absorption driving (JAD) strategy in the framework of Newell's car-following theory. The basic idea of the JAD strategy is to guide a vehicle to move slowly before being captured by an oscillation and terminate the slow movement when the vehicle would start to leave the jam if no such slow movement was implemented. To practically implement the idea, a two-step method is proposed to estimate the time–space ending point of the strategy, and a proper vehicle is selected to implement the JAD strategy based on a given expected absorbing speed and current traffic conditions. To test the JAD strategy, two simulated traffic scenarios are constructed based on a realistic data-driven car-following model. The first scenario, which only reproduces one oscillation, directly shows the effectiveness of the JAD idea in preventing wave propagation and capacity drop. The second scenario, which contains a series of traffic oscillations induced by the rubbernecking behavior, validates the proposed JAD strategy in more complicated and realistic conditions. It is indicated that the JAD strategy is able to absorb traffic oscillations; thus, the side effects incurred by the oscillations could be subsequently mitigated. The significance of this paper is to provide us a new idea to mitigate traffic oscillations, i.e., the JAD strategy.