Theory of congested highway traffic : empirical features and methods of tracing and prediction.

Results of an empirical study of congested patterns at highway bottlenecks are presented. Based on statistical data a classification of congested patterns is made. It has been found that the most frequent observed congested pattern at a bottleneck is the general pattern (GP). In GP synchronized flow occurs upstream of a bottleneck and wide moving jams spontaneously emerge in this synchronized flow. In particular, it has been found out that the highway capacity in free flow regime can be about twice as high than the capacity in congested traffic upstream of the on-ramp, if GP has been formed. A theoretical diagram of congested patterns at bottlenecks which follows from the three-phase-traffic-theory by the author is considered. The recent models "ASDA" and "FOTO" for the on-line automatic tracing and prediction of congested patterns are shortly considered. These models perform without any validation of model parameters in different environmental and traffic conditions. (Author/publisher) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract No. E208120.