MCST-Mamba: Multivariate Mamba-Based Model for Traffic Prediction

TL;DR

This paper introduces MCST-Mamba, a multivariate traffic prediction model that captures joint patterns across multiple traffic features using a novel spatio-temporal architecture, improving accuracy and efficiency.

Contribution

The paper presents a multivariate forecasting framework based on Mamba architecture that models all traffic features simultaneously, unlike prior single-channel approaches.

Findings

Achieves strong predictive performance on traffic data.

Uses fewer parameters than baseline models.

Effectively models joint traffic feature patterns.

Abstract

Accurate traffic prediction plays a vital role in intelligent transportation systems by enabling efficient routing, congestion mitigation, and proactive traffic control. However, forecasting is challenging due to the combined effects of dynamic road conditions, varying traffic patterns across different locations, and external influences such as weather and accidents. Traffic data often consists of several interrelated measurements - such as speed, flow and occupancy - yet many deep-learning approaches either predict only one of these variables or require a separate model for each. This limits their ability to capture joint patterns across channels. To address this, we introduce the Multi-Channel Spatio-Temporal (MCST) Mamba model, a forecasting framework built on the Mamba selective state-space architecture that natively handles multivariate inputs and simultaneously models all traffic features. The proposed MCST-Mamba model integrates adaptive spatio-temporal embeddings and separates the modeling of temporal sequences and spatial sensor interactions into two dedicated Mamba blocks, improving representation learning. Unlike prior methods that evaluate on a single channel, we assess MCST-Mamba across all traffic features at once, aligning more closely with how congestion arises in practice. Our results show that MCST-Mamba achieves strong predictive performance with a lower parameter count compared to baseline models.