Experimental and Empirical Investigations of Traffic Flow Instability

Traffic instability is an important but undesirable feature of traffic flow. This paper reports our experimental and empirical studies on traffic flow instability. The authors have carried out a large scale experiment to study the car-following behavior in a 51-car-platoon. The experiment has reproduced the phenomena and confirmed the findings in our previous 25-car-platoon experiment, i.e., standard deviation of vehicle speeds increases in a concave way along the platoon. Based on our experimental results, we argue that traffic speed rather than vehicle spacing (or density) might be a better indicator of traffic instability, because vehicles can have different spacing under the same speed. For these drivers, there exists a critical speed between 30 km/h and 40 km/h, above which the standard deviation of car velocity is almost saturated (flat) along the 51-car-platoon, indicating that the traffic flow is likely to be stable. In contrast, below this critical speed, traffic flow is unstable and can lead to the formation of traffic jams. Traffic data from the Nanjing Airport Highway support the experimental observation of existence of a critical speed. Based on these findings, we propose an alternative mechanism of traffic instability: the competition between stochastic factors and the so-called speed adaptation effect, which can better explain the concave growth of speed standard deviation in traffic flow.

• Record URL:
  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trpro.2017.05.010
• Record URL:
  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352146517302879
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/23521465
• Supplemental Notes:
  • © 2017 Rui Jiang et al. Elsevier B.V.
• Authors:
  • Jiang, Rui
  • Jin, Cheng-Jie
  • Zhang, H M
  • Huang, Yong-Xian
  • Tian, Jun-Fang
  • Wang, Wei
  • Hu, Mao-Bin
  • Wang, Hao
  • Jia, Bin
• Conference:
  • 22nd International Symposium on Transportation and Traffic Theory
  • Location: Chicago Illinois, United States
  • Date: 2017-6-24 to 2017-6-26
• Publication Date: 2017

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; Photos; References; Tables;
• Pagination: pp 157-173
• Serial:
  • Transportation Research Procedia
  • Volume: 23
  • Issue Number: 0
  • Publisher: Elsevier
  • ISSN: 2352-1465
  • Serial URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/23521465/
• Publication flags:

  Open Access (libre)

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Airport access; Car following; Experiments; Instability; Traffic flow; Traffic platooning; Traffic speed; Vehicle spacing
• Subject Areas: Aviation; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01642119
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Jul 27 2017 10:05AM