Combining demand management and merge control in an equilibrium network model

Equilibrium models under congested traffic conditions, and especially those addressing blocking back, are very useful to estimate the demand conditions that ITS policies should be able to manage, for instance to maintain congestion within controlled areas and avoiding that they further spillback and cause more serious and/or less controllable congestion states.
The objective of this paper is to supplement the equilibrium model, developed by the authors in recent research, with a more thorough analysis of merge behaviour, especially in cases of blocked nodes. Regulating the merger behaviour together with the demand pattern can lead to certain desired stationary states. It has a great practical significance when congestion is inevitable, while demand management and merge control are able to retain queues and spill-backs within the local area.