The Cellular Automation (CA) is a simple time-, space- and state-discrete model for analysing flow problems in physics. A few years ago this model was used first for traffic simulations. Since the model is simple, the calculation time for big-area-models is very fast. The results for 1-lane traffic at the motorway network look like reality. With the aim to simulate the traffic of the whole Northrhine-Westphalia motorway network faster than in real time, the Northrhine-Westphalia government sponsored an alliance research project where more than ten research groups from four universities are involved. This project is similar to the TRANSIMS project, USA. To describe traffic-flow more realistically the development of the CA-model for 2- and more lane traffic was necessary. It was also necessary to validate the model with historical data of traffic flow. In a first step the implementation of the motorway network and the validation of the system with data from automatic counting machines as well as data from well-known time patterns was done. The paper shows how the CA-model is used to validate several influences. First, it ensures that the local dependencies (e.g. number of lanes, gradient) were built up correctly. Secondly, time dependent influences like traffic demand, traffic mix, influence of daylight and weather conditions have to be modelled.
Samenvatting