A two-lane extension of a recently proposed cellular automaton model for traffic flow is discussed. The analysis focuses on the reproduction of the lane usage inversion and the density dependence of the number of lane changes. It is shown that the single-lane dynamics can be extended to the two-lane case without changing the basic properties of the model which are known to be in good agreement with empirical single-vehicle data. Therefore it is possible to reproduce various empirically observed two-lane phenomena, like the synchronization of the lanes, without fine-tuning of the model parameters.
Tolls are collected on many highways as a means of traffic control and revenue generation. However, the presence of tollbooths on highway surely slows down traffic flow. Here, we investigate how the presence of tollbooths affect the average car speed using a simple-minded single lane deterministic discrete traffic model. More importantly, the model is exactly solvable.
Simple cellular automata models are able to reproduce the basic properties of highway traffic. The comparison with empirical data for microscopic quantities requires a more detailed description of the elementary dynamics. Based on existing cellular automata models we propose an improved discrete model incorporating anticipation effects, reduced acceleration capabilities and an enhanced interaction horizon for braking. The modified model is able to reproduce the three phases (free-flow, synchronized, and stop-and-go) observed in real traffic. Furthermore we find a good agreement with detailed empirical single-vehicle data in all phases.
First we consider a unidirectional flux omega_bar of vehicles each of which is characterized by its `natural velocity v drawn from a distribution P(v). The traffic flow is modeled as a collection of straight `world lines in the time-space plane, with overtaking events represented by a fixed queuing time tau imposed on the overtaking vehicle. This geometrical model exhibits platoon formation and allows, among many other things, for the calculation of the effective average velocity w=phi(v) of a vehicle of natural velocity v. Secondly, we extend the model to two opposite lanes, A and B. We argue that the queuing time tau in one lane is determined by the traffic density in the opposite lane. On the basis of reasonable additional assumptions we establish a set of equations that couple the two lanes and can be solved numerically. It appears that above a critical value omega_bar_c of the control parameter omega_bar the symmetry between the lanes is spontaneously broken: there is a slow lane where long platoons form behind the slowest vehicles, and a fast lane where overtaking is easy due to the wide spacing between the platoons in the opposite direction. A variant of the model is studied in which the spatial vehicle density rho_bar rather than the flux omega_bar is the control parameter. Unequal fluxes omega_bar_A and omega_bar_B in the two lanes are also considered. The symmetry breaking phenomenon exhibited by this model, even though no doubt hard to observe in pure form in real-life traffic, nevertheless indicates a tendency of such traffic.
A one-way {em street} of width M is modeled as a set of M parallel one-dimensional TASEPs. The intersection of two perpendicular streets is a square lattice of size M times M. We consider hard core particles entering each street with an injection probability alpha. On the intersection square the hard core exclusion creates a many-body problem of strongly interacting TASEPs and we study the collective dynamics that arises. We construct an efficient algorithm that allows for the simulation of streets of infinite length, which have sharply defined critical jamming points. The algorithm employs the `frozen shuffle update, in which the randomly arriving particles have fully deterministic bulk dynamics. High precision simulations for street widths up to M=24 show that when alpha increases, there occur jamming transitions at a sequence of M critical values alphaM,M < alphaM,M-1 < ... < alphaM,1. As M grows, the principal transition point alphaM,M decreases roughly as sim 1/(log M) in the range of M values studied. We show that a suitable order parameter is provided by a reflection coefficient associated with the particle current in each TASEP.
We introduce a stochastic lattice gas model including two particle species and two parallel lanes. One lane with exclusion interaction and directed motion and the other lane without exclusion and unbiased diffusion, mimicking a micotubule filament and the surrounding solution. For a high binding affinity to the filament, jam-like situations dominate the systems behaviour. The fundamental process of position exchange of two particles is approximated. In the case of a many-particle system, we were able to identify a regime in which the system is rather homogenous presenting only small accumulations of particles and a regime in which an important fraction of all particles accumulates in the same cluster. Numerical data proposes that this cluster formation will occur at all densities for large system sizes. Coupling of several filaments leads to an enhanced cluster formation compared to the uncoupled system, suggesting that efficient bidirectional transport on one-dimensional filaments relies on long-ranged interactions and track formation.