THE TRAFFIC BOTTLENECK EFFECTS CAUSED BY THE LANE CLOSING IN THE CELLULAR AUTOMATA MODEL

As a kind of bottleneck, the lane closing has seldomly been investigated with cellular automata model. In this paper, we study this issue using the cellular automata traffic flow model. The capacity and the density distribution of this kind of bottleneck are discussed in details. We find that (i) the capacity of the bottleneck is a little smaller than the maximum flow rate of single-lane road; (ii) different regulations may lead to different density distributions of the vehicles upstream of the lane closing. Moreover, the density inversion phenomenon is reported under certain conditions. This enlightens us to propose that the phenomenon of density inversion reported in many publications may be caused by the bottlenecks on the highway.