Effects of Announcing Global Information in a Two-Route Traffic Flow Model

Abstract

A two-route traffic model with a built-in decision-making process is proposed and studied numerically. The instantaneous average speeds on the routes are announced as global information. Two types of drivers, dynamic and static, are introduced. The dynamic drivers use the global information for making decisions. It is shown that announcing the instantaneous average speeds on the routes results in a better performance of the two-route system in terms of the traffic flux compared to announcing the transit time. When the static drivers randomly select a route, the presence of the dynamic drivers does not improve the traffic flux of the system. When the static drivers tend to select a particular route, the presence of dynamic drivers leads to a higher flux. Our model thus incorporates the effects of adaptability into the cellular automaton models of traffic flow.