Lagrangian formulation for mixed traffic flow including two-wheelers

TL;DR

This paper introduces a Lagrangian formulation for mixed traffic flow including cars and two-wheelers, offering improved accuracy and flexibility over traditional Eulerian models, with applications in traffic monitoring.

Contribution

It presents a novel multi-class Lagrangian model for mixed traffic flow and a numerical method for solving its continuity equation.

Findings

Lagrangian formulation provides more accurate traffic representation.

Comparison shows advantages of Lagrangian over Eulerian models.

Applicable to traffic monitoring using probe vehicle data.

Abstract

Lagrangian formulation of kinematic wave provides a more accurate representation than the most commonly used Eulerian formulation. Furthermore, Lagrangian representation offers a flexibility to study certain traffic phenomena (e.g. capacity drop, traffic delay, trajectory). The natural resemblance of Lagrangian representation to road traffic data collection methods (probe vehicles) also renders it suitable for applications such as traffic motoring. This paper presents a multi-class Lagrangian representation for a traffic flow consisting of cars and two-wheelers. A numerical method for solving the continuity equation is presented. We compare the results obtained with Eulerian and Lagrangian formulations.