A number of adaptive control algorithms have been developed in the US and overseas. However, the practical implementation of adaptive control is limited especially in California. There is a need to develop adaptive control algorithms, evaluate their performance through a field test, and develop a deployment plan for possible Statewide application. The objectives of the study are identify and select the most promising of existing adaptive control algorithms, develop improved algorithm(s) as appropriate, conduct field tests on real-world arterials, and develop recommendations for deployment of adaptive control.

This report describes the work performed in the first phase of the research conducted under PATH Task Order 5322. It summarizes the findings from the literature review and presents the study methodology. A section of the Pacific Coast Highway in the city of Lomita was selected as the test site for evaluation of adaptive signal control strategies. A methodology was developed to develop a time-varying origin-destination (OD) matrix from the system loop detector data at the site. The calibrated OD matrix was applied to a microscopic representation of the site created in PARAMICS. Finally, a plug-in for simulating signal control in PARAMICS was written. It simulates non-adaptive strategies such as pretimed, isolated actuated, coordinated actuated, traffic responsive, and critical intersection control, as well as adaptive strategies such as RHODES and TUC.

This dissertation investigates various aspect of the design and testing of on-ramp metering control systems, including optimization-based control and microscopic freeway modeling. A new technique for generating optimal metering plans is developed. As with most predictive designs, the ramp metering rates are found as the solution to a nonlinear optimization problem. In contrast to previous designs, the new approach 1) produces a globally optimal solution to the nonlinear problem, 2) requires only to solve a single linear program, and 3) allows the enforcement of hard constraints on the on-ramp queue lengths. The price that is paid for these features is that the objective function being minimized is not Total Travel Time, but rather a member of a class of "TTT-like" objective functions. A TTT-like objective function is defined as a linear combination of mainline flows with weights that, similarly to the Total Travel Time cost weights, decrease linearly in time from some initial value to zero at the final time. An example application of the technique shows that the globally optimal metering plan with respect to a TTT-like objective function also performs well in terms of Total Travel Time. A macroscopic analysis of local traffic-responsive ramp metering on a short stretch of freeway, with a single on-ramp and no offramps, is also presented. The study compares the performance of two popular local traffic-responsive ramp metering algorithms: Alinea and Percent-Occupancy, and addresses issues pertaining to parameter tuning and loop-detector placement. The second half of the dissertation describes the construction of a detailed microsimulation model of a stretch of Interstate 210 in Pasadena, CA. The VISSIM microsimulation package was used to create this model. Descriptions of the data gathering and processing procedures, bottleneck identification, network coding, and model calibration are provided. The model is used to test the performance of candidate local traffic-responsive controllers. Questions concerning the relative merits of these controllers, parameter tuning, and loop-detector placement are addressed in the context of the large-scale microscopic model.

This paper focuses on Rosana Paulino’s installation Tecelãs, meaning weavers, from 2003, which features several ceramic nests and insect-women wrapped in thread. Tecelãs speaks to the experience of black women in Brazil and visually represents how in order to survive the precarity of black life, “woman pulls from within herself the threads with which she makes her cocoon - where she remakes, dies, and is born again.” The analysis of the paper flows between Paulino’s installation, performance studies and black studies, theories of the flesh, confinement, and diverse black feminist freedom movements. The main argument of this paper is to say that for black women and girls, literal and figurative spaces of confinement—such as living in the periphery or the marked black body—are also spaces of performative experimentations towards freedom. Following Harvey Young, Harriet Jacobs, Sarah Jane Cervenak, and Alexander Weheliye, I elaborate on their ideas of stillness, “movements in confinement,” mental and physical wandering, and experimentations of the flesh in order to take seriously their call for thinking alternative modes of freedom movements and rethink what counts as performances of the body. I argue that the construction of cocoons by Paulino’s weavers, and their actions of weaving and reconfiguring the body, metaphorically mirrors the spaces of enclosure that restrict the movements of the body, while also allowing for transformation and freedom planning.