Jamming Transition of Point-to-Point Traffic Through Cooperative Mechanisms

TL;DR

This paper explores how decentralized cooperative mechanisms like stepping aside and choosing alternative routes affect the jamming transition in two-dimensional point-to-point traffic, revealing trade-offs between flow, density, and jam patterns.

Contribution

It introduces two novel decentralized cooperative mechanisms into traffic models and compares their effects on traffic flow and jam formation through computer simulations.

Findings

CM-SA increases critical density and flow despite slight velocity decrease.

CM-CAR reduces flow but creates larger vacant areas inside jams.

Cooperative mechanisms influence jam patterns and traffic efficiency.

Abstract

We study the jamming transition of two-dimensional point-to-point traffic through cooperative mechanisms using computer simulation. We propose two decentralized cooperative mechanisms which are incorporated into the point-to-point traffic models: stepping aside (CM-SA) and choosing alternative routes (CM-CAR). Incorporating CM-SA is to prevent a type of ping-pong jumps from happening when two objects standing face-to-face want to move in opposite directions. Incorporating CM-CAR is to handle the conflict when more than one object competes for the same point in parallel update. We investigate and compare four models mainly from fundamental diagrams, jam patterns and the distribution of cooperation probability. It is found that although it decreases the average velocity a little, the CM-SA increases the critical density and the average flow. Despite increasing the average velocity, the CM-CAR decreases the average flow by creating substantially vacant areas inside jam clusters. We investigate the jam patterns of four models carefully and explain this result qualitatively. In addition, we discuss the advantage and applicability of decentralized cooperation modeling.