Controller-Based Management of Connected Vehicles in the Urban Expressway Merging Zone

The merging zone in urban expressway is easy to turn into a traffic bottleneck just because of the complex interaction among vehicles there. But with the development of connected vehicle technology, it seems that this problem can be alleviated. This paper designs a system that can harmonize the interaction among connected vehicles in the merging zone, so that they can cross this region in a smaller cost-less average travel time and average fuel consumption. The controller of the system receives the real-time data from vehicles periodically, and sends instructions of the computed solution back to them. At last, Netlogo is utilized to act as a simulation platform to evaluate the proposed system, and the results show that the coordination system of connected vehicles can reduce cost significantly in the merging zone.