Abstract
An accurate Dynamic Traffic Assignment (DTA) model should capture real world traffic flow dynamics and predict ‘dynamic’ travel times. Traditional DTA models used simple traffic flow functions such as exit flow functions, delay functions, point queues, and deterministic physical queue models. Recently, simulation based models apply well accepted traffic flow theoretic models to simulate traffic flow. However, a significant number of papers over the last decade have adopted an approximation of LWR traffic flow model, the cell transmission model, for simulating traffic flow in a DTA model. This paper compares three models, namely, LWR, Payne and Aw-Rascle, models, for their suitability to be embedded in a DTA model. Model calibration and flow simulation is performed separately using two different speed–density relationships. Results showed the importance of choice of speed-density relationship in traffic flow simulation. Models were used to simulate traffic state at different discretization levels and it was observed that as discretization becomes finer, the models' accuracy increases. Finally, the models were applied to a two node, two link network to analyze their performance in a DTA framework. The higher-order models captured congestion dissipation better than LWR model which consistently underestimates congestion and travel time.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank the Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India, for sponsoring the Center of Excellence in Urban Transport at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras that enabled this research work. The second author also thanks the New Faculty Grant provided by IIT Madras that partially funded this research work. All findings and opinions in the paper are the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agencies.
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Mohan, R., Ramadurai, G. Submission to the DTA2012 Special Issue: A Case for Higher-Order Traffic Flow Models in DTA. Netw Spat Econ 15, 765–790 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11067-014-9252-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11067-014-9252-8