Impact of underlying steady-state fundamental diagram on moving bottleneck passing rates using a second-order traffic model

Abstract

A significant number of research efforts have been attempted to study and analyze the case in which a vehicle is moving slower than the traffic stream (also known as a moving bottleneck) and its impact on the traffic stream behaviour upstream, downstream and abreast the slow-moving vehicle. This research is mainly interested in the study of the phenomenon abreast the moving obstruction by looking at the impact of the underlying base case fundamental diagram on the flow passing the moving bottleneck. The study develops a general model that estimates the passing rate that was developed using simulated data generated by the INTEGRATION software. It is demonstrated that the moving bottleneck passing rate varies in a quadratic convex fashion as a function of the bottleneck speed. Besides validating the INTEGRATION model with regard to the study of moving bottlenecks, this study develops an analytical method for estimating the moving bottleneck passing rate that allows for the studying of the phenomenon.

Keywords:

• Moving bottlenecks
• Passing rate
• INTEGRATION software

Acknowledgement

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