Distributed Optimization and Coordination Algorithms for Dynamic Traffic Metering in Urban Street Networks

Previous research has shown that proper metering of entry traffic to urban street networks, similar to metering traffic on on-ramps in freeway facilities, reduces traffic congestion, especially in oversaturated flow conditions. Building on the previous research, this paper presents a real-time and scalable methodology for finding near-optimal metering rates dynamically in urban street networks. The problem is formulated into a mixed-integer linear program (MILP) based on the cell transmission model. We propose a distributed optimization scheme that decomposes the network level MILP into several link-level MILPs to reduce the complexity of the problem. We convert the link-level MILPs to linear programs to reduce the computational complexity further. Moreover, we create distributed coordination between the link-level linear programs to push the solutions toward optimality. The distributed optimization and coordination solution algorithm is incorporated into a rolling horizon technique to account for the time-varying demand and capacity and to reduce the computational complexity further. We applied the proposed solution technique to a number of case studies and observed that it was scalable and real time and found solutions that were at most 2.2% different from the optimal solution of the problem. Like the previous studies, we found significant improvements in network operations as a result of traffic metering.