Shock Waves on the Highway
Operations Research
1956
A simple theory of traffic flow is developed by replacing individual vehicles with a continuous “fluid” density and applying an empirical relation between speed and density. Characteristic features of the resulting theory are a simple “graph-shearing” process for following the development of traffic waves in time and the frequent appearance of shock waves. The effect of a traffic signal on traffic streams is studied and found to exhibit a threshold effect wherein the disturbances are minor for light traffic but suddenly build to large values when a critical density is exceeded.
- DOI
- 10.1287/opre.4.1.42
- Volume
- 4 (1)
- Pages
- 42-51
- Language
- en
- Export
- BibTeX
- Sources
- crossref