Traffic flow in a Manhattan-like urban system

Abstract

In this paper, a cellular automaton model of vehicular traffic in a Manhattan-like urbansystem is proposed. In this model, the origin–destination trips and traffic lights have beenconsidered. The system exhibits three different states, i.e. moving state, saturation stateand global deadlock state. With a grid coarsening method, vehicle distribution in themoving state and the saturation state has been studied. Interesting structures(e.g. windmill-like ones, T-shirt-like ones, Y-like ones) have been revealed. Ametastability of the system is observed in the transition from the saturation state to theglobal deadlock state. The effect of an advanced traveller information system(ATIS), the traffic light period and the traffic light switch strategy have also beeninvestigated.