Employment of the Traffic Management Laboratory (TRAMLAB) for Evaluating Ramp Control Strategies in the Twin Cities

Ramp metering is one way to address freeway traffic congestion. This study employs the Traffic Management Laboratory (TRAMLAB) to evaluate the effectiveness of MnDOT's control strategy in three Twin Cities freeway sections totaling approximately 65 miles. It develops a new traffic management concept for early detection of incident-prone traffic conditions and integrates it in order to smooth flow and prevent incident occurrence, thereby further reducing delays and improving safety. The project is part of a larger program which aims to develop the TRAMLAB as part of the ITS Laboratory at the University of Minnesota. Such an environment will contain state-of-the-art traffic simulation programs and allow the development of viable, intelligent, and automated traffic-flow simulation programs and simulation systems that can function as both operational and research tools. Keywords-traffic simulation, traffic control, corridor control, ramp metering, accident prevention, machine, vision detector, freeway