Work

A bounded acceleration framework for emission-aware variable speed limit control

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Urban traffic congestion significantly impacts regional air quality and contributes substantially to pollutant emissions. Suburban freeway corridors are a major source of traffic-related emissions, particularly carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NO_x) and hydrocarbons (HC). This paper proposes an emission-aware receding-horizon Variable Speed Limit (VSL) controller with a shadow-penalized one-step update rule for peripheral freeway corridors. Emission rates on freeways exhibit high sensitivity to speed fluctuations and congestion recovery processes. To address this relationship, we generalize the bounded-acceleration LWR (BA‑LWR) traffic flow model by allowing the acceleration bound to depend on speed and deriving analytical expressions for flow and travel times. This BA‑LWR variant enhances behavioural realism through the incorporation of driver responses to congestion, which is widely recognized as a main cause of the important capacity drop phenomenon. Our approach implements dynamical optimization of a VSL to balance the dual objectives of minimizing both travel time and emissions as quantified by the COPERT V (Emep2023) model. Numerical simulations demonstrate that this framework effectively manages congestion and reduces emissions across various traffic demand scenarios.

Source: Physica A Statistical Mechanics and its Applications

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2026.131477

Authors: Alexander Hammerl, Ravi Seshadri, Thomas Kjær Rasmussen, Otto Anker Nielsen

Institution: Technical University of Denmark

Language: English

Topic: Traffic control and management

Subfield: Control and Systems Engineering

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDG: Sustainable cities and communities

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,550