Modeling and analysis of mixed flow of cars and powered two wheelers

Abstract

In modern cities, a rapid increase of motorcycles and other types of Powered Two-Wheelers (PTWs) is observed as an answer to long commuting in traffic jams and complex urban navigation. Such increasing penetration rate of PTWs creates mixed traffic flow conditions with unique characteristics that are not well understood at present. Our objective is to develop an analytical traffic flow model that reflects the mutual impacts of PTWs and Cars. Unlike cars, PTWs filter between cars, have unique dynamics, and do not respect lane discipline, therefore requiring a different modeling approach than traditional "Passenger Car Equivalent" or "Follow the Leader". Instead, this work follows an approach that models the flow of PTWs similarly to a fluid in a porous medium, where PTWs "percolate" between cars depending on the gap between them. Our contributions are as follows: (I) a characterization of the distribution of the spacing between vehicles by the densities of PTWs and cars; (II) a definition of the equilibrium speed of each class as a function of the densities of PTWs and cars; (III) a mathematical analysis of the model's properties (IV) an impact analysis of the gradual penetration of PTWs on cars and on heterogeneous traffic flow characteristics.

Modeling the impact of on-line navigation devices in traffic flows

“…Macroscopic multi-population flow traffic models have been the subject of active research in recent years, mainly aiming at describing the interactions among different classes of vehicles such as cars and trucks (see, e.g. [2], [6]), cars and motorcycles [20], [9], [14] or even shared human and autonomous vehicles roads [18]. Some works also focus on the dynamics of several populations on a network, e.g.…”

Integrated Variable Speed Limits and Lane-Changing Control for Freeway Lane-Drop Bottlenecks

“…These models mainly characterize mixed flows of cars and trucks. Later, mixed flow models consisting of Powered Two-Wheelers (PTWs) are also proposed [22]. This paper excludes PTWs according to the actual vehicle types on Chinese freeways.…”

Field data application of a non‐lane‐based multi‐class traffic flow model

“…Numerical simulation is performed in a 50 m-2 s space-time grid using a finite difference method [6]. Since the model is highly non-linear, calibration of its parameters is done using the improved stochastic ranking evolution strategy (ISRES) algorithm [23] in the non-linear optimisation library [24] minimising an error function in terms of outflow (aggregated over one minute) as given in (12). A sample calibration curve is shown in Section 5.1 where the model is applied to a road section with a bottleneck…”

“…Unique characteristics include 'gap filling' behaviour and the formation of two-dimensional queues. Many of the existing multiclass models rely on strong analytical proofs; however, they either assume equilibrium traffic [7][8][9] or restrict the number of vehicles classes to two [10][11][12] or neglect the lack in lane discipline condition [13][14][15][16][17]. Very few multi-class models are validated with real data [13,[18][19][20].…”