Improved 2D Intelligent Driver Model simulating synchronized flow and evolution concavity in traffic flow

TL;DR

This paper improves the 2D Intelligent Driver Model to better simulate synchronized traffic flow and traffic oscillation patterns, aligning simulations more closely with empirical data and capturing complex traffic phenomena.

Contribution

An enhanced 2D Intelligent Driver Model that accurately reproduces synchronized flow, phase transitions, and traffic oscillation evolution, addressing limitations of the original model.

Findings

Successfully simulates phase transition from synchronized flow to jams

Reproduces traffic oscillation evolution concavity

Aligns simulation results with empirical Floating Car Data

Abstract

This paper firstly show that 2 Dimensional Intelligent Driver Model (Jiang et al., PloS one, 9(4), e94351, 2014) is not able to replicate the synchronized traffic flow. Then we propose an improved model by considering the difference between the driving behaviors at high speeds and that at low speeds. Simulations show that the improved model can reproduce the phase transition from synchronized flow to wide moving jams, the spatiotemporal patterns of traffic flow induced by traffic bottleneck, and the evolution concavity of traffic oscillations (i.e. the standard deviation of the velocities of vehicles increases in a concave/linear way along the platoon). Validating results show that the empirical time series of traffic speed obtained from Floating Car Data can be well simulated as well.