Understanding widely scattered traffic flows, the capacity drop, platoons, and times-to-collision as effects of variance-driven time gaps

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dc.creatorTreiber, Martin
dc.creatorKesting, Arne
dc.creatorHelbing, Dirk
dc.date2005-08-30
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-07T08:22:42Z
dc.date.available2026-07-07T08:22:42Z
dc.descriptionWe investigate the adaptation of the time headways in car-following models as a function of the local velocity variance, which is a measure of the inhomogeneity of traffic flow. We apply this mechanism to several car-following models and simulate traffic breakdowns in open systems with an on-ramp as bottleneck. Single-vehicle data generated by several 'virtual detectors' show a semi-quantitative agreement with microscopic data from the Dutch freeway A9. This includes the observed distributions of the net time headways and times-to-collision for free and congested traffic. While the times-to-collision show a nearly universal distribution in free and congested traffic, the modal value of the time headway distribution is shifted by a factor of about two in congested conditions. Macroscopically, this corresponds to the 'capacity drop' at the transition from free to congested traffic. Finally, we explain the wide scattering of one-minute flow-density data by a self-organized variance-driven process that leads to the spontaneous formation and decay of long-lived platoons even for deterministic dynamics on a single lane.
dc.descriptionSubmitted to Phys. Rev. E
dc.identifierhttps://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0508222
dc.identifierhttp://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0508222
dc.identifierPhys. Rev. E 74, 016123 (2006)
dc.identifierdoi:10.1103/PhysRevE.74.016123
dc.identifier.urihttp://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/135741
dc.subjectPhysics and Society
dc.titleUnderstanding widely scattered traffic flows, the capacity drop, platoons, and times-to-collision as effects of variance-driven time gaps
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