• Journal of Korean Port Research
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.333-350
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• 1999

Today freeway is thought to be a very important transportation facility carrying tremendous traffic flow as the main corridor within the area of between the areas. However freeway is experiencing severe congestion and accidents by increased entrance ramp flow especially at peak time period. Ramp meters on the freeway entrance ramps that supply traffic to the freeway in a measured or appropriately regulated amount are needed for alleviating freeway congestion. Because ramp meters can be operated to discharge traffic at a measured or regulated rate thus maintaining more uniform speed on the mainline section maximizing the throughput to the freeway within the capacity of a downstream bottleneck and reducing the congestion related accidents. Thus the objectives in this study were to analyze the traffic characteristics on the freeway I-94 with ramp metering system before/after ITS technology in Detroit (Michigan) area compare shifts of the traffic characteristics on the freeway I-94 before/after ITS technology and finally suggest a better ramp metering strategy for the freeway system The following results were obtained: i)Flow occupancies and speeds on the mainline merge section of freeway were shown to be a big difference depending on the peak periods areas and directions based on the distribution of traffic flow characteristics on the freeway. ii)Reduced speed was shown to be more than 5 mph and ramp flow was also shown to be more than 240 vph at peak periods if there was the ramp metering system constructed on the freeway. iii)Ramp metering system was shown to be optimally operated on the freeway if ramp flow could be maximized within the range of over 900 vph and reduced occupancy could be also maximized by no more than 2 percent at peak periods. iv)The average flows on the freeway after the ITS technology were shown to be a decrease of over 20% depending on the peak periods areas and directions when compared with those flow on the freeway before the ITS technology. over 20% depending on the peak periods areas and directions when compared with those speeds on the freeway before the ITS technology. vi)The average metering rates on the freeway after the ITS technology were shown to be an increase of over 10% depending on the peak periods areas and directions when compared with those metering rates on the freeway before the ITS technology.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.84-92
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• 2006

Freeway Corridors consist of urban freeways and parallel arterials that drivers can use alternatively. Ramp metering in freeways and signal control in arterials are contemporary traffic control methods that have been developed and applied in order to improve traffic conditions of freeway corridors. However, most of the existing studies have focused on either optimal ramp metering in freeways, or progression signal strategies between arterial intersections. There have been no traffic control systems in Korea that integrates the freeway ramp metering and arterial signal control. The effective control strategies for freeway operations may cause negative effects on arterial traffic. On the other hand, traffic congestion and bottleneck phenomenon of arterials due to the increasing peak-hour travel demand and ineffective signal operation may generate an accessibility problem to freeway ramps. Thus, the main function of the freeway which is the through-traffic process has not been successful. The purpose of this study is to develop an integrated control model that connects freeway ramp metering systems and signal control systems in arterial intersections. And Optimization of integrated control model which consists of ramp metering and signal control is another purpose. Optimization results are verified by comparison with the results from MATDYMO.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.8-15
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• 2007

Freeway corridors consist of urban freeways and parallel arterials that drivers can use alternatively. Ramp metering in freeways and signal control in arterials are contemporary traffic control methods that have been developed and applied in order to improve traffic conditions of freeway corridors. However, most of the existing studies have focused on either optimal ramp metering in freeways, or progression signal strategies between arterial intersections. There have been no traffic control systems in Korea that integrates the freeway ramp metering and arterial signal control. The effective control strategies for freeway operations may cause negative effects on arterial traffic. On the other hand, traffic congestion and bottleneck phenomenon of arterials due to the increasing peak-hour travel demand and ineffective signal operation may generate an accessibility problem to freeway ramps. Thus, the main function of the freeway which is the through-traffic process has not been successful. The purpose of this study is to develop an integrated control model that connects freeway ramp metering systems and signal control systems in arterial intersections. And Optimization of integrated control model which consists of ramp metering and signal control is another purpose. The design of experiment, neural network, and simulated annealing are used for optimization.

• Proceedings of the KOR-KST Conference
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• 1998.09a
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• pp.152-159
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• 1998

This paper presents a method evaluating benefits of ramp metering strategies on freeway safety. Based on the traffic and the accident data collected on a 4.2 km (2.6 mile) section of Interstate highway 35-West in Minneapolis, U.S.A., the relationship between traffic variables and safety measures is investigated. An aggregate specification that could be used to predict accident frequencies on freeways is proposed as a multiple regression form. The specification includes 15 minutes volume and occupancy data, which are commonly available from surveillance and control systems. The primary variables that appear to affect the frequencies of freeway accident are: vehicle-miles of travel, entrance ramp volumes and the dynamic effect of queue building. A simulation method evaluating the dynamic effect of control strategies on safety is proposed next. The potential benefits of freeway ramp metering on freeway safety are finally investigated via a proposed method.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.117-132
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• 1995

Peak-period congestion is a frequent occurrence on many freeways. Entrance-metering is an effective strategey in improving urban freeway traffic condition. This paper describes the prodecure to develop a computer program for proparing optimum ramp-metering stategies. Four existing ramp-metering optimaization models wer reviewed and evaluated in regared to their theories and actural performances. A optimization model was proposed in this paper. Final model takes aform of quadratic programming. The performance of the propeosed model wastest using FREFLO.

• KIISE Transactions on Computing Practices
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.223-238
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• 2015

Ramp metering is the most effective and direct method to control a vehicle entering the freeway. This paper proposed the new density-based ramp metering method. Existing methods that use the flow data had low reliability data and can have various problems. Also, when the ramp metering was operated by freeway congestion, the additional congestion and over-capacity can occur in the ramp. To solve this problem with the existing method, the proposed method used the density and acceleration data of the freeway and considered the ramp status. The developed strategy was tested on Trunk Highway 62 west bound (TH-62 WB) in Minnesota Twin-City and compared with Stratified Zone Metering(SZM), which had been operating in the Twin-City freeway. To constitute the experiment environment, the VISSIM simulator was used. The Traffic Information and Condition Analysis System (TICAS) was developed to control the PTV VISSIM simulator. The experiment condition was set between 2:00 PM and 7:00 PM, Oct 5th, 2014 during severe traffic congestion. The simulation results showed that total travel time was reduced by 20% for SZM. Thus, we solved the problem of ramp congestion and over-capacity.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.65 no.12
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• pp.2046-2052
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• 2016

Ramp metering is one of the most efficient and widely used control methods for an intelligent transportation management system on a freeway. Its objective is to control and upgrade freeway traffic by regulating the number of vehicles entering the freeway entrance ramp, in such a way that not only the alleviation of the congestion but also the smoothing of the traffic flow around the desired density level can be achieved for the maintenance of the maximum mainline throughput. When the cycle of the signal detection is larger than that of the system process, the density tracking problem needs to be considered in the form of the discrete-time system. Therefore, a discrete-time sliding mode control method is proposed for the ramp metering problem in the presence of both input constraint in the on-ramp and exogenous disturbance in the off-ramp considering the random behavior of the driver. Simulations were performed using a validated second-order macroscopic traffic flow model in Matlab environment and the simulation results indicate that proposed control method can achieve better performance than previously well-known ALINEA strategy in the sense that mainstream flow throughput is maximized and congestion is alleviated even in the presence of input constraint and exogenous disturbance.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.59-69
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• 1999

A Freeway corridor is a network consisting of a few Primary longitudinal roadways (freeway or major arterial) carrying a major traffic movement with interconnecting roads which offer the motorist alternative paths to his/her destination. Control measures introduced to ameliorate traffic performance in freeway corridors typically include ramp metering at the freeway entrances, and signal control at each intersections. During a severe freeway incident, on-ramp metering usually is not adequate to relieve congestion effectively. Diverting some traffic to the Parallel surface street to make full use of available corridor capacity will be necessary. This is the purpose of the traffic management system. So, an integrated traffic control scheme should include three elements. (a)on-ramp metering, (b)off-ramp diversion and (c)signal timing at surface street intersections. The purpose of this study is to develop an integrated optimal control model in a freeway corridor. By approximating the flow-density relation with a two-segment linear function. the nonlinear optimal control problem can be simplified into a set of Piecewise linear programming models. The formulated optimal-control Problem can be solved in real time using common linear program. In this study, program MPL(ver 4.0) is used to solve the formulated optimal-control problem. Simulation results with TSIS(ver 4.01) for a sample network have demonstrated the merits of the Proposed model and a1gorithm.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.9-21
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• 2011

The ramp metering strategy is one of the effective ways to solve the freeway traffic congestion in peak time periods. The study was initiated with assurance that the traffic conditions of ramp and mainline that mitigate the congestion would exist. Under the moderate traffic volume levels, ramp metering is expected to improve the quality of freeway operation. To derive a range of traffic condition, three operation strategies(Do nothing, ramp metering, minimum ramp control) were set up and the ALINEA algorithm was implemented with microscopic traffic simulator "VISSIM". The volumes of mainline and ramp are key parameters for the simulation scenarios. Measures of effectiveness for the study include mainline density and average vehicle speed. Operation boundaries in terms of traffic volume were proposed for operating ramp metering strategy. The results show that under the proposed traffic conditions the ramp metering was more successful to increase average vehicle speeds. Traffic controls under the operation boundaries of traffic levels give significant effects for density and average vehicle speed. The outcomes of this study would be useful to improve the performance of ramp metering strategies.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.111-118
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• 2014

PURPOSES : This study performs fundamental research on ramp-metering design criteria. METHODS : We carefully review previous studies in terms of ramp-metering design criteria and then consider applicability in Korea. For this, traffic simulation model is employed to analyze actual effect according to specific location of stop-line when implementing ramp-metering. RESULTS : When a stop-line moving forward with a 50m interval, travel speed at mainline relative to current stop-line location tends to decrease. However, traveling speed at approach roads increase about 5~18% under the same condition. When a stop-line location moving backward with a 50m interval, mainline travel speed increase approximately 17~32% whereas traveling speed at approach roads decrease. All cases are compared with the current stop-line location. CONCLUSIONS : We believe that both cases are useful with respect to freeway management. For example, moving forward a stop-line case can be used management for queuing area at ramp section and approach roads. Moving backward a stop-line case can be used for traffic control, focusing on mainline of freeways.