English

Will jams get worse when slow cars move over?

Statistical Mechanics 2007-05-23 v1 Physics and Society

Abstract

Motivated by an analogy with traffic, we simulate two species of particles (`vehicles'), moving stochastically in opposite directions on a two-lane ring road. Each species prefers one lane over the other, controlled by a parameter 0b10 \leq b \leq 1 such that b=0b=0 corresponds to random lane choice and b=1b=1 to perfect `laning'. We find that the system displays one large cluster (`jam') whose size increases with bb, contrary to intuition. Even more remarkably, the lane `charge' (a measure for the number of particles in their preferred lane) exhibits a region of negative response: even though vehicles experience a stronger preference for the `right' lane, more of them find themselves in the `wrong' one! For bb very close to 1, a sharp transition restores a homogeneous state. Various characteristics of the system are computed analytically, in good agreement with simulation data.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0503413,
  title  = {Will jams get worse when slow cars move over?},
  author = {B. Schmittmann and J. Krometis and R. K. P. Zia},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0503413},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

7 pages, 3 figures; to appear in Europhysics Letters (2005)