Relating the dynamics of road traffic in a stochastic cellular automaton to a macroscopic first-order model

Abstract

In this paper, we describe a relation between a microscopic traffic cellular automaton (TCA) model (i.e., the stochastic TCA model of Nagel and Schreckenberg) and the macroscopic first-order hydrodynamic model of Lighthill, Whitham, and Richards (LWR). The innovative aspect of our approach, is that we explicitly derive the LWR's fundamental diagram directly from the STCA's rule set, by assuming a stationarity condition that converts the STCA's rules into a set of linear inequalities. In turn, these constraints define the shape of the fundamental diagram, which is then specified to the LWR model. Application of our methodology to a simulation case study, allows us to compare the tempo-spatial behavior of both models. Our results indicate that, in the presence of noise, the capacity flows in the derived fundamental diagram are overestimations of those of the STCA model. Directly specifying the STCA's capacity flows to the LWR fundamental diagram, effectively remedies most of the mismatches between both approaches. Our methodology sees the STCA complementary to the LWR model and vice versa, so the results can be of great assistance when interpreting the traffic dynamics in both models. Especially appealing, is the fact that the STCA can visualize the higher-order characteristics of traffic stream dynamics, e.g., the fans of rarefaction waves.