Emission reduction potential of freeway stop-and-go wave smoothing

Fuente: arXiv
Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Ji, Junyi, Gloudemans, Derek, Zachár, Gergely, Barbour, William, Sprinkle, Jonathan, Piccoli, Benedetto, Work, Daniel B.
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2026
Materias:
Acceso en línea:
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
_version_ 1866911535872344064
author Ji, Junyi
Gloudemans, Derek
Zachár, Gergely
Barbour, William
Sprinkle, Jonathan
Piccoli, Benedetto
Work, Daniel B.
author_facet Ji, Junyi
Gloudemans, Derek
Zachár, Gergely
Barbour, William
Sprinkle, Jonathan
Piccoli, Benedetto
Work, Daniel B.
contents Real-world potential of stop-and-go wave smoothing at scale remains largely unquantified. Smoothing freeway traffic waves requires creating a gap so the wave can dissipate, but the gap suggested is often too large and impractical. We propose a counterfactual wave smoothing benchmark that reconstructs a smooth and feasible trajectory from each empirical trajectory by solving a quadratic program with fixed boundary conditions and a maximum allowable gap constraint. We estimate the emission reduction potential from trajectories using the MOVES model. Applying the framework to nine weeks of weekday peak traffic data, featuring rich day-to-day stop-and-go wave dynamics, from the I-24 MOTION testbed, we find meaningful reduction potential under a 0.1-mile maximum gap: average CO2 reductions of 7.92% to 12.04% across lanes, with concurrent reductions of 14.30% to 28.91% CO, 23.15% to 29.42% HC, and 24.37% to 30.98% NOx. Our analysis also quantifies the trade-off between maximum allowable gap opening and emissions benefits.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_21476
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Emission reduction potential of freeway stop-and-go wave smoothing
Ji, Junyi
Gloudemans, Derek
Zachár, Gergely
Barbour, William
Sprinkle, Jonathan
Piccoli, Benedetto
Work, Daniel B.
Systems and Control
Real-world potential of stop-and-go wave smoothing at scale remains largely unquantified. Smoothing freeway traffic waves requires creating a gap so the wave can dissipate, but the gap suggested is often too large and impractical. We propose a counterfactual wave smoothing benchmark that reconstructs a smooth and feasible trajectory from each empirical trajectory by solving a quadratic program with fixed boundary conditions and a maximum allowable gap constraint. We estimate the emission reduction potential from trajectories using the MOVES model. Applying the framework to nine weeks of weekday peak traffic data, featuring rich day-to-day stop-and-go wave dynamics, from the I-24 MOTION testbed, we find meaningful reduction potential under a 0.1-mile maximum gap: average CO2 reductions of 7.92% to 12.04% across lanes, with concurrent reductions of 14.30% to 28.91% CO, 23.15% to 29.42% HC, and 24.37% to 30.98% NOx. Our analysis also quantifies the trade-off between maximum allowable gap opening and emissions benefits.
title Emission reduction potential of freeway stop-and-go wave smoothing
topic Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.21476