Traffic flow through multi-lane tollbooths on a toll highway

We study the traffic states and queuing occurring in traffic flow on a toll highway with multi-lane tollgates. The traffic states change with increasing density and varying number of tollgates. When the manual-collection vehicles sort themselves into the tollgates, the queues occur just in front of the tollgates if the vehicular density is higher than a critical value. The queuing in front of tollgates is induced by the competition between the lane expansion and slowdown effects. When the lane expansion effect is superior to the slowdown effect, no queuing occurs. We derive the fundamental diagrams (current–density diagrams) for the traffic flow on the toll highway. The current saturates at the nearest tollgate at a low density and the saturation extends to the next-nearest tollgate with increasing density.