Modeling heterogeneous traffic flow: A pragmatic approach

Modeling dynamics of heterogeneous traffic flow is central to the control and operations of today’s increasingly complex transportation systems. The authors develop a macroscopic heterogeneous traffic flow model. This model considers interplay of multiple vehicle classes, each of which is assumed to possess homogeneous car-following behavior and vehicle attributes. The authors propose the concepts of road capacity split and perceived equivalent density for each class to model both lateral and longitudinal cross-class interactions across neighboring cells. Rather than leveraging hydrodynamic analogies, it establishes pragmatic cross-class interaction rules aspired by capacity allocation and approximate inter-cell fluxes. This model generalizes the classical Cell Transmission Model (CTM) to three types of traffic regimes in general, i.e. free flow, semi-congestion, and full congestion regimes. This model replicates prominent empirical characteristics exhibited by mixed vehicular flow, including formation and spatio-temporal propagation of shockwaves, vehicle overtaking, as well as oscillatory waves. Those features are validated against numerical experiments and the NGSIM I-80 data. Realistic class-specific travel times can be computed from this model efficiently, which demonstrates the feasibility of applying this multi-class model to large-scale real-world networks.

• Record URL:
  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trb.2017.01.011
• Record URL:
  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191261517300565
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/01912615
• Supplemental Notes:
  • Abstract reprinted with permission of Elsevier.
• Authors:
  • (Sean) Qian, Zhen
  • Li, Jia
  • Li, Xiaopeng (Shaw)
  • 0000-0002-5264-3775
  • Zhang, Michael
  • Wang, Haizhong
• Publication Date: 2017-5

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: Figures; References;
• Pagination: pp 183-204
• Serial:
  • Transportation Research Part B: Methodological
  • Volume: 99
  • Issue Number: 0
  • Publisher: Elsevier
  • ISSN: 0191-2615
  • Serial URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01912615

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Macroscopic traffic flow; Multimodal transportation; Traffic flow; Travel time
• Uncontrolled Terms: Cell transmission model; Multiclass traffic assignment
• Subject Areas: Highways; Planning and Forecasting;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01635574
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: May 25 2017 1:56PM