Traffic flow behavior at a single-lane urban roundabout

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a stochastic cellular automata model to study the traffic behavior at a single-lane roundabout. Vehicles can enter the interior lane or exit from it via [Formula: see text] intersecting lane, the boundary conditions are stochastic. The traffic is controlled by a self-organized scheme. It has turned out that depending on the rules of insertion to the roundabout, five distinct traffic phases can appear, namely, free flow, congestion, maximum current, jammed and gridlock. The transition between the free flow and the gridlock is forbidden. The density profiles are used to study the traffic pattern at the interior lane of the roundabout. In order to quantify the interactions between vehicles in the interior lane of the roundabout, the velocity correlation coefficient (VCC) is also studied. Besides, the spatiotemporal diagrams corresponding to the entry/exit lanes are derived numerically. Furthermore, we have investigated the effect of displaying signal ([Formula: see text], as the [Formula: see text] decreases, the maximum current increases at the expense of the free flow and the jamming phase. Finally, we have investigated the effect of the braking probability [Formula: see text] on the interior lane of the roundabout. We have found that the increase of [Formula: see text] raises the spontaneous jam formation on the ring. Thus, enlarges the maximum current and the jamming phase while the free flow phase decreases.