Jam formation in traffic flow on a highway with some slowdown sections

Abstract

We study the traffic jams appearing on a single-lane highway with a few slowdown sections. At low density, the flow (current) increases linearly with density, while it saturates at some values of intermediate density. In such case that some slowdown sections have the same speed limit, when the flow begins to saturate, a single discontinuous front (stationary shock wave) occurs before a slowdown section or some discontinuous fronts appear before some slowdown sections. For the case of different speed limits, the discontinuous front occurs before the section of strongest slowdown. The saturated flow is given by the maximal value of the current of the strongest slowdown section. The relationship between the densities is derived before and after the discontinuity. The dependence of jam lengths on density is derived numerically and analytically. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.