Guidelines for Evaluation of Ramp Signaling Deployments in a Real-Time Operations Environment

2017PDFTech ReportFDOT Project BDV29-977-25Ramp meteringOn rampsRamps (Interchanges)Traffic signal control systemsWarrants (Traffic control devices)Ramp SignalingRamp MeteringTrafficBottlenecksWarrants Truck ImpactsFloridaUnited StatesFlorida International University. Lehman Center for Transportation ResearchHadi, MohammedXiao, YanWang, TaoFartash, HomaTariq, Mosammat TahninSharmin, NashidFlorida International University. Lehman Center for Transportation ResearchFlorida. Dept. of Transportation. Office of Research and DevelopmentUS Transportation CollectionState agencies have developed warrants and guidelines for the identification of on-ramps for metering. However, these warrants only consider recurrent traffic conditions in the vicinity of each on-ramp without considering the need to meter multiple ramps to mitigate the impacts of downstream system bottlenecks. The goal of this project was to develop a system-wide-based method in addition to existing local warrants for the offline identification of ramp metering installation locations and for online activation of ramp metering. A methodology was developed in this study to identify the ramps to meter based on system-wide recurrent and non-recurrent traffic conditions. This methodology incorporates the stochastic nature of the demand and capacity and the impacts of incidents and weather using Monte Carlo simulation and a ramp selection procedure based on a linear programing formulation. The variation in queue storage capacity between ramps, the available acceleration lanes, and the related impacts of trucks are also considered in the developed methodology. The output of this method can be used in benefit-cost analyses of ramp metering deployments and associated decisions such as which ramps to meter and when to activate in real-time