IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/itsrrp/qt2ts079sx.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Structure of the Transition Zone Behind Freeway Queues

Author

Listed:
  • Munoz, Juan Carlos
  • Daganzo, Carlos

Abstract

Observations of freeway traffic flow are usually quite scattered about an underlying curve when plotted versus density or occupancy. Although increasing the sampling intervals can reduce the scatter, whenever an experiment encompasses a rush hour with transitions in and out of congestion, some outlying data stubbornly remain beneath the "equilibrium" curve. The existence of these non-equilibrium points is an ill-understood phenomenon that appears to contradict the simple kinematic wave (KW) model of traffic flow. This paper provides a tentative explanation of the phenomenon, based on experimental evidence. The evidence was a queue that grew and receded over two detector stations, generating typical flow-density scatter-plots at both locations. The locations were far from other interacting traffic streams. The data revealed that a transition zone where vehicles decelerated gradually existed immediately behind the queue. The transition zone was quite wide (about 1 km at both locations), moved slowly (approximately with the "shock" velocityof KW theory) and spent many minutes over each detector station. Disequilibrium flow-density points arose only when the transition zone was over the detectors, suggesting that the transition zone explains their occurrence. The disequilibrium points drifted gradually from one branch of the curve to the other, as KW theory would have predicted if "shocks" had a characteristic width equal to the dimension of the transition zone. Nothing was found in the data to contradict this view. The paper also shows that if one neglects the shocks' physical dimension, the resulting errors are unimportant for practical purposes. Thus, it appears that KW theory can predict traffic behavior at the back of queues when the lanes at the back of the queue are equally attractive to all drivers.

Suggested Citation

  • Munoz, Juan Carlos & Daganzo, Carlos, 2000. "Structure of the Transition Zone Behind Freeway Queues," Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings qt2ts079sx, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley.
  • Handle: RePEc:cdl:itsrrp:qt2ts079sx
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/2ts079sx.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cassidy, Michael J., 1998. "Bivariate relations in nearly stationary highway traffic," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 49-59, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jin, Wen-Long & Zhang, H. Michael, 2013. "An instantaneous kinematic wave theory of diverging traffic," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 1-16.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Banks, James H., 2003. "Average time gaps in congested freeway flow," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 539-554, July.
    2. Seo, Toru & Kawasaki, Yutaka & Kusakabe, Takahiko & Asakura, Yasuo, 2019. "Fundamental diagram estimation by using trajectories of probe vehicles," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 40-56.
    3. Herrera, Juan C. & Bayen, Alexandre M., 2010. "Incorporation of Lagrangian measurements in freeway traffic state estimation," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 44(4), pages 460-481, May.
    4. Cassidy, Michael J. & Jang, Kitae & Daganzo, Carlos F., 2010. "The smoothing effect of carpool lanes on freeway bottlenecks," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 65-75, February.
    5. Ngoduy, D. & Liu, R., 2007. "Multiclass first-order simulation model to explain non-linear traffic phenomena," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 385(2), pages 667-682.
    6. Cassidy, Michael J. & Bertini, Robert L., 1999. "Some traffic features at freeway bottlenecks," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 25-42, February.
    7. Cassidy, Michael J. & Ahn, Soyoung, 2004. "Driver Turn-Taking Behavior in Congested Freeway Merges," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt06j9k7h2, University of California Transportation Center.
    8. Kontorinaki, Maria & Spiliopoulou, Anastasia & Roncoli, Claudio & Papageorgiou, Markos, 2017. "First-order traffic flow models incorporating capacity drop: Overview and real-data validation," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 52-75.
    9. Martínez-Díaz, Margarita & Pérez, Ignacio, 2015. "A simple algorithm for the estimation of road traffic space mean speeds from data available to most management centres," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 19-35.
    10. Yan, Qinglong & Sun, Zhe & Gan, Qijian & Jin, Wen-Long, 2018. "Automatic identification of near-stationary traffic states based on the PELT changepoint detection," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 39-54.
    11. Daganzo, Carlos F., 2007. "Urban gridlock: Macroscopic modeling and mitigation approaches," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 49-62, January.
    12. Maiti, Nandan & Laval, Jorge A. & Chilukuri, Bhargava Rama, 2024. "Universality of area occupancy-based fundamental diagrams in mixed traffic," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 640(C).
    13. Coifman, Benjamin & Kim, Seoungbum, 2011. "Extended bottlenecks, the fundamental relationship, and capacity drop on freeways," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 45(9), pages 980-991, November.
    14. Yin, Ruyang & Zheng, Nan & Liu, Zhiyuan, 2022. "Estimating fundamental diagram for multi-modal signalized urban links with limited probe data," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 606(C).
    15. Kai Nagel & Peter Wagner & Richard Woesler, 2003. "Still Flowing: Approaches to Traffic Flow and Traffic Jam Modeling," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 51(5), pages 681-710, October.
    16. Cassidy, Michael J. & Anani, Shadi B. & Haigwood, John M., 2000. "Study of Freeway Traffic Near an Off-Ramp," Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings qt4mh8b630, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley.
    17. Leclercq, Ludovic & Geroliminis, Nikolas, 2013. "Estimating MFDs in simple networks with route choice," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 468-484.
    18. Coifman, Benjamin, 2006. "Extracting More Information from the Existing Freeway Traffic Monitoring Infrastructure," Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings qt34n479gz, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley.
    19. Bae, Bumjoon & Liu, Yuandong & Han, Lee D. & Bozdogan, Hamparsum, 2019. "Spatio-temporal traffic queue detection for uninterrupted flows," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 20-34.
    20. Oh, Simon & Yeo, Hwasoo, 2015. "Impact of stop-and-go waves and lane changes on discharge rate in recovery flow," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 88-102.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cdl:itsrrp:qt2ts079sx. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lisa Schiff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/itucbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.