Development of Impulse Propagation Model between Lanes through Temporal-Spatial Analysis

In general, flow propagation has been explained using the shock wave theory which is expressed as a function of variations in volume and density. However, the theory has certain limitation in portraying heterogeneous flow, e.g., flow propagation between lanes. Motivated by this fact, this study seeks a new measure for analyzing the propagation characteristics of traffic flow at three sections of highway (i.e., merging area, weaving section, and basic section) from temporal and spatial perspectives, and then develops a model for estimating the measure for the flow propagation. The "shock wave speed" which is the measure widely adopted in literature, was first applied to describe the propagation characteristics, but it was hard to find distinct characteristics in the propagation. This finding inspires to develop a new measure named "Impulse Volume". It is shown that the measure better explains the propagation characteristics at the three study sections of highway. In addition, several models are also developed by performing multi-regression analyses to explain the flow propagation between lanes. The models proposed in this paper can be distinguished in three sections and the lane placement.