Mesoscopic event model of highway traffic by Batches Petri nets

Abstract This paper deals with Batches Petri nets and traffic road systems. To evaluate bottlenecks of traffic flows and control strategies, a first hybrid model at the mesoscopic level has been proposed based on Batches Petri nets with controllable batch speed. In this paper, this formalism is extended in order to represent the fundamental diagram as a triangular form, one of the three basic concepts of traffic dynamics. The batch place is enriched by a critical density and by a new comportment dedicated to the bottleneck behavior. Illustrated on a motorway example, the proposed batch formalism allows the traffic flow to be represented through hybrid and discrete event dynamics.