A control strategy of variable speed limits (VSL) was developed to reduce the travel time at freeway recurrent bottleneck areas. The proposed control strategy particularly focused on preventing the capacity drop and increasing the discharge flow. A cell transmission model (CTM) was developed to evaluate the effects of the proposed VSL control strategy on the traffic operations. The results show that the total travel time is reduced by 25.5% and the delay is reduced by 56.1%. The average travel speed is increased by 34.3% and the queue length is reduced by 31.0%. The traffic operation is improved by the proposed VSL control strategy. The way to use the proposed VSL control strategy in different types of freeway bottlenecks was also discussed by considering different traffic flow characteristics. It is concluded that the VSL control strategy is effective for merge bottlenecks but is less effective for diverge bottlenecks.