Prevision of vehicle headway effect on urban traffic with a new car-following model

Abstract

In this study, a new car-following model is established aiming to predict the variation of vehicle headways on urban road. The linear stability condition is derived corresponding to the prevision of headway in moving. The modified Korteweg–de Vries (mKdV) equation is deduced through the nonlinear analysis. The kink–antikink soliton solution of the mKdV equation can interpret the urban traffic jams near the critical point under the prevision of vehicle headway. Moreover, it is clear that the prevision of headway effect did improve the stability of urban traffic flow since the traffic jams are alleviated efficiently by taking into account the prevision of headway term in numerical simulations, which are consistent with the theoretical analysis.