Balancing Efficiency and Equity of Ramp Meters
ASCE Journal of Transportation Engineering, Vol. 131, No. 6, pp. 477-481
31 Pages Posted: 11 Sep 2007
Abstract
A new freeway ramp control objective - minimizing total weighted travel time is presented in this study. This new objective function is capable of balancing efficiency and equity of ramp meters, while the previous metering objective - minimizing total absolute travel time is purely efficiency-oriented and hence produces a most efficient but least equitable solution. When certain assumptions hold, this metering objective is shown to be equal to minimizing non-linearly weighted ramp delay. A simulation method to achieve the new metering objective is developed and demonstrated using the example of BEEX, a new ramp control strategy also developed in this study, in a microscopic traffic simulator.
Keywords: ramp meters, efficiency, equity
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