Abstract
In this study the authors present an integrated framework for solving the estimation and control problems of a traffic system with high-occupancy-toll (HOT) and general purpose lanes, where high-occupancy vehicles (HOVs) can use the HOT lanes for free, but single-occupancy vehicles (SOVs) have to pay a price to use the HOT lane. They assume that the total system is congested, but the demand of HOVs is below the HOT lanes’ capacity. The two lane groups are modeled by point queues, whose waiting times are determined by their demands and capacities. The authors first analytically solve the optimal dynamic prices with constant demands of HOVs and SOVs and obtain an insight regarding the dynamic price and then develop a PI² controller to determine the dynamic prices without knowing SOVs’ lane choice models, but to satisfy the two control objectives: to maximize the flow-rate but not to form a queue on the HOT lanes. Then the authors present an estimation method to estimate the parameters of a given lane choice model. With numerical simulations they show that the method is effective with two different lane choice models: the vehicle-based user equilibrium model and the multinomial logit model. The new control method is more versatile than existing ones since it is effective without knowing the underlying lane choice models or their parameters.