In recent years, variable speed limit (VSL) has been used to decrease the total travel time and alleviate the traffic congestion on freeway. To improve traffic efficiency, we proposed a novel VSL strategy considering dynamic control cycle in this study. An extension of the cell transmission model was used to depict the traffic characteristics under VSL control, and the VSL strategy was designed to provide multiple control cycles. A probability formula was developed and used to determine the optimal quantity of control cycles in the VSL strategy. An objective optimization function was formulated with the aim of minimizing total travel time. A sensitivity analysis was applied to compare different control strategies under a variety of road bottleneck structures by both the numerical analysis and simulation experiments. The results show that dynamic control cycle VSL strategy outperformed other control scenarios and effectively reduced traffic congestion duration and enhanced the service level of freeway network.

近年来，变速限速（VSL）已用于减少总行驶时间并减轻高速公路上的交通拥堵。为了提高交通效率，我们在研究中提出了一种考虑动态控制周期的新型VSL策略。信元传输模型的扩展用于描述VSL控制下的流量特性，而VSL策略被设计为提供多个控制周期。开发了一个概率公式，用于确定VSL策略中最佳的控制周期数量。制定了目标优化功能，目的是使总行驶时间最小化。通过数值分析和仿真实验，通过敏感性分析比较了各种道路瓶颈结构下的不同控制策略。