Time-Gap Based Traffic Model for Vehicular Traffic Flow

There have been many studies for modeling vehicular traffic flow using fluid models. However, these previous approaches do not accommodate realistic models for traffic density, flow, and velocity. The existing models also fail to uncover the relationships among energy efficiency, capacity, and safety. We investigate traffic networks from a system-level perspective. In result, we provide a time-gap based mathematical traffic model for vehicular traffic flow on highways. Our model explains the widely known triangular fundamental diagram, which represents vehicular traffic systems with the three primary parameters: maximum free-flow velocity, a typical safety length of vehicles, and a mean value of the time-gap of the traffic data during congested conditions. This result is also well validated with measured traffic data using least squares matching and with previous research outcomes about the propagation velocity. In addition, we suggest two distinct analysis techniques to estimate the time-gap from the traffic data measured on highways.