Effect of the upstream traffic condition on traffic congestion in lattice hydrodynamic model

Abstract

With the increase of vehicles, traffic congestion has become a prominent problem. Environmental pollution, energy waste and even traffic accidents are easily caused by congestion. Nowadays, with the help of V2V and V2I communications, real-time interaction of vehicle information can be achieved. Vehicles can easily get information about other vehicles. In reality, a driver looks at the following car (i.e. upstream traffic condition) as well as the preceding car while driving. However, the effect of upstream condition is rarely analyzed. In the paper, a term describing the upstream traffic condition is added in Nagatani’s model. The effect of the upstream traffic condition to linear stability is obtained by applying the perturbation method. Nonlinear stability equations, such as the mKdV equation, are also derived. Theoretical results of linear stability and nonlinear stability are shown intuitively through numerical simulations. It can be found that traffic is more stable when the upstream traffic condition is considered.