Evaluating urban traffic jam based on a Urban Cell Transmission Model (UCTM)

The problem of traffic congestion has become a major and costly problem in many cities. Modeling, simulation and estimation of urban traffic are necessary, particularly mathematic models. This paper propose a novel mathematic model based on CTM named Urban Cell Transmission Model (UCTM), which is a macroscopic model for simulating urban traffic. We use a fixed proportion of turn whenever vehicles meet a junction instead of origin-destination matrix. We consider the density of each cell composed of three different directions for inflow and outflow as left-turning, ahead, right-turning. From the computational results of numerical examples, we find that the jam propagates fast at the beginning and has its upper bound of jam size. We also study jam dissipation, and we observe that both the Critical Time of Block Clearance (CTBC) and the initial density have significant effect on the jam propagation and dissipation.