Author(s)

Kazuhiro Tobita, Yuichi Naito, Takashi Nagatani

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Division of Thermal Science, Shizuoka University, Hamamatsu 432-8561, Japan.

In this paper we study the traffic states and jams in vehicular traffic merging and bifurcating at a junction on a two-lane highway. The two-lane traffic model for the vehicular motion at the junction is presented where a jam occurs frequently due to merging, lane changing, and bifurcating. The traffic flow is called the weaving. At the weaving section, vehicles slow down and then move aside on the other lane for changing their direction. We derive the fundamental diagrams (flow-density diagrams) for the weaving traffic flow. The traffic states vary with the density, slowdown speed, and the fraction of vehicles changing the lane. The dynamical phase transitions occur. It is shown that the fundamental diagrams depend highly on the traffic states.

Vehicular Dynamics; Traffic Jam; Junction; Dynamical Phase Transition; Weaving

K. Tobita, Y. Naito and T. Nagatani, "Traffic Flow Merging and Bifurcating at Junction on Two-Lane Highway," World Journal of Mechanics, Vol. 2 No. 4, 2012, pp. 203-215. doi: 10.4236/wjm.2012.24025.