Microsimulation model for motorway merges with ramp-metering controls

This paper presents a newly developed microsimulation model for motorway merge traffic, focusing on issues that relate to ramp-metering (RM) control and its effectiveness. The model deals with general and more specific drivers’ behavioral tasks, such as the drivers’ cooperative nature in allowing other drivers to merge in front of them either by decelerating or shifting to adjacent lanes. The main criteria of this model are governed by the application of car-following, lane-changing, and gap-acceptance rules. The model has been calibrated and validated mainly using real traffic data taken from loop detectors for two-, three-, and four-lane motorways. Compared with the S-PARAMICS software, using the same data, the model showed better results. The effectiveness of some of the widely used RM control algorithms, such as Demand-Capacity, ALINEA, and ANCONA, were also assessed after finding the optimum parameters (such as critical occupancy and position of loop detectors). Index Terms—Microsimulation, occupancy, ramp-metering (RM) algorithms, travel time