Spatiotemporal statistical features of velocity responses to traffic congestions in a local motorway network

Abstract The causal connection between congestions and velocity changes at different locations induces various statistical features, which we identify and measure in detail. We carry out an empirical analysis of large-scale traffic data on a local motorway network around the Breitscheid intersection in the North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. We put forward a response function which measures the velocity change at a certain location versus time conditioned on a congestion at another location. We use a novel definition of the corresponding congestion indicator to ensure causality. We find that the response of velocities to the congestion exhibits phase changes in time. A negative response at smaller time lags transforms into positive one at larger time lags, implying a certain traffic mechanism. The response decays as a power law with the distance. We also identify a scaling property leading to a collapse of the response functions on one curve.