The research presented in this dissertation is directed at improving the strategies for real-time ramp metering during congestion caused by an incident (i.e. nonrecurrent congestion). The research presented in this dissertation describes a control framework for on-line metering which responds to time variant operating conditions within a freeway system. This framework includes two important functions: (1) a standard decision process for optimal ramp metering rates, and (2) a dynamic process for estimating incident duration (ID).; A computer-based program "Ramp Control Program (RCP)" has been developed in this study and tested under an array of traffic operating scenarios. These numerical evaluations and comparisons with conventional ramp metering strategies illustrate the value of the proposed control system for real-time operation.
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