Bottleneck mitigation through a variable speed limit system using connected vehicles

Variable speed limit (VSL) systems are used to improve the traffic conditions by adjusting the speed limits based on the current traffic situation. Advances in vehicle technology have made it possible to use connected vehicles in VSL systems. Connected vehicles can continuously transmit information about their speed and location, which can be used to estimate the current traffic conditions at arbitrary locations. In this study, we propose a VSL system based on connected vehicles. The aim is to also allow application of VSLs for non-recurrent bottleneck mitigation at arbitrary locations, unlike today's systems which require densely placed detectors or are limited to beforehand known bottleneck locations. The proposed system is evaluated by microscopic traffic simulation. The results indicate that the VSL system manage to improve traffic efficiency in a simulated incident scenario.