Stability analysis of microscopic models for traffic flow with lane changing

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the stability of microscopic multi-lane traffic models with lane changing, proposing simple rules and confirming their effectiveness through stability analysis and numerical simulations that reproduce traffic phenomena like stop-and-go waves.

Contribution

It introduces a new microscopic traffic model with lane changing rules and provides a stability analysis extending from single-lane to multi-lane scenarios.

Findings

Model reproduces stop & go waves

Stability conditions derived for multi-lane traffic

Numerical tests confirm analytical predictions

Abstract

This paper investigates the mathematical modeling and the stability of multi-lane traffic in the microscopic scale, studying a model based on two interaction terms. To do this we propose simple lane changing conditions and we study the stability of the steady states starting from the model in the one-lane case and extending the results to the generic multi-lane case with the careful design of the lane changing rules. We compare the results with numerical tests, that confirm the predictions of the linear stability analysis and also show that the model is able to reproduce stop & go waves, a typical feature of congested traffic.