Ramp metering with an objective to reduce fuel consumption

Ramp meters successfully decrease congestion but leave a burden on the traffic situation at on-ramps. Chaotic queuing leads to many stop-and-go movements and causes inefficiency where fuel consumption is concerned. As part of the eCoMove project, complementary strategies are being designed and evaluated to reduce fuel consumption at metered on-ramps, using vehicle-to-infrastructure communication. This paper presents the design of two strategies, as well as their effect as derived from simulation using AIMSUN. The first strategy uses virtual stop lines to halt upstream parts of the queue, keeping them from stopand-go movement, in combination with ‘turn off engine’ advices. Simulation shows that this strategy can reduce fuel consumption at on-ramps with 15 percent. The second strategy uses vehicle classification to discriminate between vehicles, lanes, branches and possible on-ramps. In this case, simulation shows that this strategy can reduce fuel consumption at on-ramps with 29.6 percent.