Related papers: Similar is Better: Speed Variability Reduces Traff…
When a new vehicle joins a lane, those behind may have to temporarily slow to accommodate them. Changing lane can be forced due to lane drops or junctions, but may also take place spontaneously at discretion of drivers, and recent studies…
Traffic congestion is usually observed at the upper streams of bottlenecks such as tunnels. Congestion appears as stop-and-go waves and high density uniform flow. We perform simulations of traffic flow with a bottleneck using the coupled…
Spatiotemporal features and physics of vehicular traffic congestion occurring due to heavy freeway bottlenecks caused by bad weather conditions or accidents are found based on simulations in the framework of three-phase traffic theory. A…
Due to the complexity of the traffic flow dynamics in urban road networks, most quantitative descriptions of city traffic so far are based on computer simulations. This contribution pursues a macroscopic (fluid-dynamic) simulation approach,…
We provide a model to understand how adverse weather conditions modify traffic flow dynamic. We first prove that the microscopic Free Flow Speed of the vehicles is changed and then provide a rule to model this change. For this, we consider…
The capacity of a street segment quantifies the maximal density of vehicles before congestion arises. Here we show in a simple mathematical model that fluctuations in the instantaneous number of vehicles entering a street segment are…
Car traffic in urban systems has been studied intensely in past decades but models are either limited to a specific aspect of traffic or applied to a specific region. Despite the importance and urgency of the problem we have a poor…
Experimental studies on vehicular traffic provide data on quantities like density, flux, and mean speed of the vehicles. However, the diagrams relating these variables (the fundamental and speed diagrams) show some peculiarities not yet…
A simple algorithm for constructing an effective traffic model is presented. The algorithm uses statistically well-defined quantities extracted from the flow-density plot, and the resulting effective model naturally captures and predicts…
Traffic flow at low densities (free traffic) is characterized by a quasi-one-dimensional relation between traffic flow and vehicle density, while no such fundamental diagram exists for `synchronized' congested traffic flow. Instead, a…
Moving bottlenecks, such as slow-driving vehicles, are commonly thought of as impediments to efficient traffic flow. Here, we demonstrate that in certain situations, moving bottlenecks---properly controlled---can actually be beneficial for…
By means of microscopic simulations we show that non-instantaneous adaptation of the driving behaviour to the traffic situation together with the conventional measurement method of flow-density data can explain the observed…
Statistical mechanics of a small system of cars on a single-lane road is developed. The system is not characterized by a Hamiltonian but by a conditional probability of a velocity of a car for the given velocity and distance of the car…
A generalized optimal velocity model is analyzed, where the optimal velocity function depends not only on the headway of each car but also the headway of the immediately preceding one. The stability condition of the model is derived by…
Why does a traffic jams form out of nowhere, and why does it stretch for kilometers even after the initial cause is passed? This study examines how congestion moves and spreads across motorways using a surprisingly simple method: response…
While many classical traffic models treat the spatial extension of streets continuously or by discretization into cells of a certain length, we will subdivide roads into comparatively long homogeneous road sections of constant capacity with…
Mitigating traffic congestion on urban roads, with paramount importance in urban development and reduction of energy consumption and air pollution, depends on our ability to foresee road usage and traffic conditions pertaining to the…
Although routing applications increasingly affect individual mobility choices, their impact on collective traffic dynamics remains largely unknown. Smart communication technologies provide accurate traffic data for choosing one route over…
The theory of urban traffic flow has been developed and new types of meta-automata have emerged and simulate realistic traffic conditions relatively well. Among these models, the brake light model can simulate the three-phase traffic flow…
We study traffic flow on roads with a localized periodic inhomogeneity such as traffic signals, using a stochastic car-following model. We find that in cases of congestion, traffic flow can be optimized by controlling the inhomogeneity's…