Cellular Automata for Traffic Flow Modeling
Author: Saifallah Benjaafar
Publisher:
Published: 1998
Total Pages: 40
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis paper explores the usefulness of cellular automata (CA) to traffic flow modeling. The authors extend some of the existing CA models to capture characteristics of traffic flow that have not been possible to model using either conventional analytical models or existing simulation techniques. In particular, they examine higher moments of traffic flow and evaluate their effect on overall traffic performance. The behavior of these higher moments is found to be surprising, somewhat counter-intuitive, and to have important implications for design and control of traffic systems. For example, the authors show that the density of maximum throughput is near the density of maximum speed variance. Contrary to current practice, traffic should, therefore, be steered away from this density region. For deterministic systems they found traffic flow to possess a finite period which is highly sensitive to density in a non-monotonic fashion. They show that knowledge of this periodic behavior is very useful in designing and controlling automated systems. These results are obtained for both single and two lane systems. For two lane systems, they also examine the relationship between lane changing behavior and flow performance. They show that the density of maximum lane changing frequency occurs past the density of maximum throughput. Therefore, traffic should also be steered away from this density region.
