Influence of tidal lane on traffic breakdown and spatiotemporal congested patterns at moving bottleneck in the framework of Kerner’s three-phase traffic theory

Abstract With tidal traffic becoming an important feature of urban traffic, tidal lane is becoming more and more important. The influence of tidal lane on traffic flow is studied by many scholars. Existing tidal lane control methods generally select flow of lane or density of vehicles as the determining factors for decide the opening time and direction of the tidal lane, which is not predictive actually. In this article, a bilateral six-lanes motorway model with tidal lane model is established to study the positive influence of tidal lane on relieving upstream congestion induced by moving bottleneck and the negative effect of moving bottleneck on tidal lane. This model is based on the well-known KKSW (Kerner–Klenov–Schreckeneberg–Wolf) CA (cellular automaton) model, proposed to simulate the effect of tidal lane on adjacent lanes. Through numerical simulation, the characteristics of traffic flow are studied in the framework of Kerner’s three-phase traffic theory. By comparing density and speed of vehicles and flow without tidal lane to these indicators with tidal lane opening, we discover moving bottleneck having a significantly negative impact on the road service level in the direction of lane reduced. And tidal lane has the positive effect on dissipating the upstream moving bottleneck in the direction of lane increased. Based on the simulation results, a qualitatively tidal lane opening strategy that considers the upstream moving bottleneck is proposed.