Well-posedness and finite volume approximations of the LWR traffic flow model with non-local velocity

Abstract

We consider an extension of the traffic flow model proposed by Lighthill, Whitham and Richards, in which the mean velocity depends on a weighted mean of the downstream traffic density. We prove well-posedness and a regularity result for entropy weak solutions of the corresponding Cauchy problem, and use a finite volume central scheme to compute approximate solutions. We perform numerical tests to illustrate the theoretical results and to investigate the limit as the convolution kernel tends to a Dirac delta function.