A CAV-based perimeter-free regional traffic control strategy utilizing existing parking infrastructure

TL;DR

This paper introduces a perimeter-free traffic control strategy for CAV networks that uses existing parking infrastructure to temporarily hold vehicles, reducing congestion and improving travel times.

Contribution

It presents a novel congestion management approach leveraging parking facilities and vehicle holding strategies, differing from traditional perimeter control methods.

Findings

Reduces overall vehicle travel times in simulations.

Effective across various parking configurations and CAV penetration levels.

Improves traffic flow without traditional perimeter control.

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel perimeter-free regional traffic management strategy for networks under a connected and autonomous vehicle (CAV) environment. The proposed strategy requires a subset of CAVs to temporarily wait at nearby parking facilities when the network is congested. After a designated holding time, these CAVs are allowed to re-enter the network. Doing so helps reduce congestion and improve overall operational efficiency. Unlike traditional perimeter control approaches, the proposed strategy leverages existing parking infrastructure to temporarily hold vehicles in a way that partially avoids local queue accumulation issues. Further, holding the vehicles with the longest remaining travel distances creates a self-reinforcing mechanism which helps reduce congestion more quickly than perimeter metering control. Simulation results show that the proposed strategy not only reduces travel time for vehicles that are not held, but can also reduce travel times for some of the held vehicles as well. Importantly, its performance has been demonstrated under various configurations of parking locations and capacities and CAV penetration rates.