Linking synchronized flow and kinematic waves.

This paper shows that including the effects of lane-changing activity in kinematic wave theory reveals the physical mechanisms and reproduces the main empirical features that motivated Kerner's three-phase theory. This is shown using a hybrid representation of traffic flow where lane-changing vehicles are treated as discrete particles with realistic accelerations embedded in a continuous multilane kinematic wave stream. The author shows that this parsimonious four-parameter model reproduces the three phases identified by Kerner, including phase transitions and jam formation. The author concludes that synchronized flow and wide-moving jams differ only in their lane-changing spatiotemporal patterns, but obey the same sonservation laws and boundary conditions. Freeway segments with one, two and three junctions are analyzed. (Author/publisher)