Cooperative control method of urban expressway considering environmental benefits

With the development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in recent years, the intelligent control and exhaust emission improvement of urban expressway on-ramp merging zones have increasingly attracted attention. This study first proposes a cooperative control method based on the dynamic feedback effect of real-time data in both ramp and mainline control, and completes the localized calibration of the Moves model. Then, by setting low emissions and high vehicle throughput as control objectives, a joint simulation of traffic flow and vehicle exhaust emission models was carried out through the integration of “MOVES+SUMO+PyCharm,” establishing a connection between traffic flow operational parameters and exhaust emission parameters. Finally, the study conducted a comparative analysis of different control methods in the ramp merging zones based on average density and vehicle exhaust emission indicators (CO, HC, NOX emission factors). The results reveal that with the proposed model, the travel time is shortened by 23.2% and the vehicle exhaust pollutant emission factor is reduced by 28%, which further demonstrate the model’s capability in improving traffic operation efficiency while mitigating the environmental pollution problem of urban expressways.