Effect of Traffic Modeling on Control of Traffic Networks

Abstract

A study of the literature on macroscopic fundamental diagram (MFD)-based traffic control revealed an impractical assumption on the homogeneity of large urban networks during dynamic control processes. This finding motivated the work described in this paper on the optimal control of a two-region traffic network to evaluate the effect of traffic modeling on control. A cost function with adjustable weighting factors to specify the protection priority of the two regions is proposed. Two modeling approaches were used to describe the traffic network. They included a cell transmission modeling approach, which can properly describe traffic dynamics, and a bin modeling approach under the assumption on traffic homogeneity in the control process. Simulation results revealed that the designed control and the resulting control performance highly depend on system modeling.