Dynamic access control for two-direction shared traffic lanes

In specific traffic situations, a single lane is available for traffic from two directions. Examples are traffic accidents or road maintenance reducing the number of available lanes on a road or, as we faced in a project on underground freight transportation, construction of a single lane for two directions to reduce infrastructure investment. Access control rules are required to manage vehicle flows such, that collision is avoided and waiting times are minimised. In contrast to standard traffic control at crossroads, these control rules should take into account significant driving times along the single lane (in our application up to 8 minutes). In this paper, we discuss several heuristic control rules for access control, both simple periodic rules and intelligent adaptive rules (look ahead heuristics, dynamic programming solutions). Numerical experiments show that intelligent control rules reduce waiting times by 10-25% compared to a straightforward periodic rule. The best adaptive control rule is a dynamic programming rule.