Macroscopic modelling of arterial traffic : an extension to the cell transmission model

Abstract

This paper extends the capability of the cell transmission model (CTM) to capture the complexities of the arterial network. This includes short turning lane blockages and spillbacks, shared lanes, and unbalanced lane utilisation. Moreover, queue estimation accuracy is improved through appropriate consideration of the queue discharge process. The proposed Arterial Cell Transmission Model (ACTM) has been thoroughly tested with synthetic data and further validated using real data. Compared with the CTM, the proposed ACTM improves the back of the queue estimation accuracy by 20%−80%. The ACTM offers a more realistic simulation of densities on each lane in case of blockages or spillbacks from short turning lanes and models the interaction among movements in shared lanes including gap acceptance behaviour of permitted turns from shared lanes that are opposed by through traffic. The extension also enables the balancing of unequal lane utilisation whenever required. The ACTM is expected to improve the performance of traffic management tools by providing a more realistic simulation of arterial traffic with better queue estimations.