CAV as a mobile control platform: a paradigm for traffic management on highways

The unique nature of road bottleneck areas involves a sudden decrease in lane capacity, making them prone to congestion. Particularly on highways, this issue demands optimization and resolution. The traditional road infrastructure control technique, known as variable speed limit (VSL) technology, not only mandates the installation of gantries for variable message signs but also remains susceptible to various factors such as weather conditions and driver compliance rates. Meanwhile, as the intelligence level of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) continues to advance, CAV can serve not only the traditional transportation function but also be controlled as a mobile intelligent control platform in the future. Leveraging this, this paper proposes a novel paradigm for highway traffic management. It involves substituting VSL control by controlling CAVs in mixed traffic scenarios to optimize road infrastructure and enhance traffic performance. Specifically, this paper initially proposes a CAVs control strategy aimed at global optimization to enhance overall road operations. Additionally, this paper delves deeper into the impact of compliance rates and penetration rates on the effectiveness of the existing VSL control. Furthermore, our proposed control strategy is compared with the widely implemented VSL, demonstrating a significant enhancement in traffic performance. This strategy leads to a 19.1% increase in average speed as compared to no-control strategy, while the optimization effect achieved by VSL control is only 9.6%. Simulation results reveal the transformation of CAVs into mobile intelligent control platforms, not only optimizing traffic congestion but also effectively replacing traditional infrastructure control to maximize socio-economic benefits.