Applied Traffic Flow Simulation

Abstract Dynamic traffic flow development on a road section without off- and on-ramps is determined by time dependent boundary conditions and initial density and velocity distributions. In cases of application, usually, these initial distributions are not known. Based on the works by Kerner et al . (1993a, b, 1994), a measurement-based traffic flow simulation for the determination of section related traffic data was developed (Kronjager et al. 1995). Starting with initial conditions obtained by interpolating the measured traffic data, using finite difference methods and a tailored least-square method, the model allows the calculation of the density and velocity profiles as a function of time and space. The study of this approach in different field tests has shown, that after a certain time the simulated traffic flow quantities comply well with experimental data.