A macroscopic flow model for mixed bicycle–car traffic

Abstract

Bicycles are gaining popularity as a mode of transport resulting in a mixed bicycle–car traffic situation on urban roads. Cyclists, however, are hardly included in traffic flow models which complicates the design of safe and congestion-free traffic situations. This work introduces class-specific speed functions based on two variables, being space headway for both cars and cyclists. This enables the macroscopic modelling of mixed bicycle–car traffic. The multi-class macroscopic flow model is successfully tested for different traffic situations that occur on urban roads where cyclists and cars share the same infrastructure, e.g. cyclists overtaking a queue of cars and cars overtaking cyclists with reduced speed. The mixed bicycle–car flow model allows travel time estimation of both classes, which in turn can be used to evaluate the overall performance of a mixed traffic road.

Keywords:

• Macroscopic flow model
• mixed traffic
• bicycle
• class-specific speed function

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID

M. J. Wierbos  http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8857-4006

V. L. Knoop  http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7423-3841

S. P. Hoogendoorn  http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1579-1939

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the ALLEGRO project, which is financed by the European Research Council (Grant Agreement No. 669792) and the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions.