Traffic Characterization Based on Driver Reaction

A macroscopic model for nonhomogeneous traffic is introduced that incorporates relaxation time and lateral time headway, and accounts for driver reaction time. Driver reaction is based on models of real-world nonhomogeneous traffic flow in Pakistan and Iran. A lateral time headway model is obtained using lane change data to characterize traffic during lane changes. The performance of the proposed model is compared with the well-known Payne–Whitham (PW) model on a 3000 m circular road using the FORCE numerical scheme. The results show that the initial multi-cluster density distribution evolves more realistically and accurately with the proposed model. Thus, it can be used to aid in traffic congestion mitigation for on-ramps and off-ramps.