Lane-Changing Feedback Control for Efficient Lane Assignment at Motorway Bottlenecks

A feedback control strategy is proposed for lane assignment at bottleneck locations. The strategy assumes that some vehicles equipped with vehicle automation and communication systems are capable of receiving and executing specific lane-changing orders or recommendations. From a previously proposed optimal control strategy based on a simplified multilane motorway traffic flow model and formulated as a linear quadratic regulator, a feedback control problem was designed. The aim was to maximize the throughput at bottleneck locations while distributing the total density at the bottleneck area over the lanes according to a given policy by optimal lane assignment of the vehicles upstream of the bottleneck. The feedback control decisions were based on real-time measurements of the traffic state and inflow. The proposed strategy was tested on a nonlinear first-order macroscopic multilane traffic flow model, which also accounted for the capacity drop phenomenon.