This book offers a detailed investigation of breakdowns in traffic and
transportation networks. It shows empirically that transitions from free
flow to so-called synchronized flow, initiated by local disturbances at
network bottlenecks, display a nucleation-type behavior: while small
disturbances in free flow decay, larger ones grow further and lead to
breakdowns at the bottlenecks. Further, it discusses in detail the
significance of this nucleation effect for traffic and transportation
theories, and the consequences this has for future automatic driving,
traffic control, dynamic traffic assignment, and optimization in traffic
and transportation networks.
Starting from a large volume of field traffic data collected from
various sources obtained solely through measurements in real world
traffic, the author develops his insights, with an emphasis less on
reviewing existing methodologies, models and theories, and more on
providing a detailed analysis of empirical traffic data and drawing
consequences regarding the minimum requirements for any traffic and
transportation theories to be valid.
The book
- proves the empirical nucleation nature of traffic breakdown in
networks
- discusses the origin of the failure of classical traffic and
transportation theories
- shows that the three-phase theory is incommensurable with the
classical traffic theories, and
- explains why current state-of-the art dynamic traffic assignments
tend to provoke heavy traffic congestion,
making it a valuable reference resource for a wide audience of
scientists and postgraduate students interested in the fundamental
understanding of empirical traffic phenomena and related data-driven
phenomenology, as well as for practitioners working in the fields of
traffic and transportation engineering.
