Variable speed limit control for steady and oscillatory queues at fixed freeway bottlenecks

New variable speed limit (VSL) schemes are developed based on the Kinematic Wave theory to increase freeway bottleneck discharge rates under two scenarios: (i) steady queue and (ii) oscillatory queue. The key principle is to impose VSL control some distance upstream of a bottleneck to starve the inflow to the bottleneck and dissipate the queue. Once the queue near the bottleneck vanishes, another less restrictive VSL is imposed upstream to (i) resolve the heavy queue generated by the first VSL and (ii) regulate the inflow to the bottleneck to sustain the stable maximum bottleneck discharge rate and prevent traffic breakdown. Several strategies are developed for each scenario ranging from the simplest strategy that maximizes the delay saving to more sophisticated strategies for upstream queue management. An analysis of the model parameters suggests that a wide range of the first speed limit (to clear the queue around the bottleneck) can be imposed to realize significant delay savings. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.