Traffic jam in signalized road network

Abstract

Traffic jam in large signalized road network presents a complex nature. In order to reveal the jam characteristics, two indexes, SVS (speed of virtual signal) and VOS (velocity of spillover), were proposed respectively. SVS described the propagation of queue within a link while VOS reflected the spillover velocity of vehicle queue. Based on the two indexes, network jam simulation was carried out on a regular signalized road network. The simulation results show that: 1) The propagation of traffic congestion on a signalized road network can be classified into two stages: virtual split driven stage and flow rate driven stage. The former stage is characterized by decreasing virtual split while the latter only depends on flow rate; 2) The jam propagation rate and direction are dependent on traffic demand distribution and other network parameters. The direction with higher demand gets more chance to be jammed. Our findings can serve as the basis of the prevention of the formation and propagation of network traffic jam.

Keywords

traffic engineering / network traffic jam / virtual signal / traffic control

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