Macroscopic analysis of moving bottlenecks

Abstract

Numerous research efforts have attempted to study the impact of a slow moving vehicle on the surrounding traffic stream behavior, also known as a moving bottleneck. However, none of the previous studies succeeded in developing a theory that is applicable to the breadth of traffic conditions that the phenomenon may occur in. Specifically, they are either based on intuition and mathematical reasoning or oriented towards very specific situations that do not reflect empirical behavior. Consequently, the research presented in this paper proposes and calibrates a flow–density relationship that takes into account all the parameters defining the state of traffic on the underlying fundamental diagram. The developed relationship, namely a bottleneck diagram, contains all the information necessary for the analysis of moving bottlenecks such as the traffic stream states directly upstream, downstream, and abreast the moving bottleneck (the passing rate and the average passing speed). A major contribution of the study resides in the fact that it reveals that the behavior of the traffic stream downstream abreast the moving bottleneck is governed by the arrival rate.

Keywords:

• Moving bottlenecks
• passing rate
• INTEGRATION software
• fundamental diagram
• macroscopic analysis

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the financial support provided by the Mid-Atlantic University Transportation Center (MAUTC) in funding this research effort.