Balancing efficiency and equity of ramp meters

An efficient ramp control strategy may not be politically attractive due to its negative impacts on equity. This paper addresses this issue and presents a new objective for ramp metering-minimizing weighted travel time-which is able to balance efficiency and equity. A quasioptimization/ simulation approach is used to achieve the new objective. BEEX, a new family of control strategies with various degrees of equity consideration, are developed and used to demonstrate this approach. Journal of Transportation Engineering