Unveiling network capacity potential with imminent supply information part I: Theoretical derivation

An urban network’s supply capability is notably impacted by the operational efficiency of its bottlenecks, namely the intersections. An essential and powerful metric for describing a network’s overall supply performance is the capacity region (CR), which represents all potential combinations of capacities for different intersection movements. This study explores the impact of imminent saturation flow rate (I-SFR) information on the CR of traffic networks. The work is separated into Part I and Part II to prevent a lengthy paper. Specifically, in Part I, we systematically formulate the conflicting relationship between different movements using greatest conflicting group and green ratio constraints, formally define the dominating relationship between different CRs, and theoretically demonstrate 1) how knowing the accurate I-SFRs of additional conflicting movements can expand the CR, resulting in a larger CR that dominates the original one, and 2) how improving the prediction accuracy of observed movements’ I-SFRs can enlarge the CR. Part II will develop a “ruler” – the BackPressure control with partial I-SFR information – to measure the changes in CR and validate the theories of Part I through simulation experiments.