A Fiber Bundle Model of Traffic Jams

TL;DR

This paper models traffic jams using a fiber bundle approach, analyzing the critical transition to congestion in city road networks and comparing it with single-lane traffic models.

Contribution

It introduces a fiber bundle model for traffic failure, providing analytical insights into the jamming transition in complex road networks.

Findings

Critical behavior of traffic jamming can be studied analytically for specific capacity distributions.

Comparison with single-channel traffic models reveals similarities and differences in transition dynamics.

The model offers a new framework for understanding systemic traffic congestion phenomena.

Abstract

We apply the equal load-sharing fiber bundle model of fracture failure in composite materials to model the traffic failure in a system of parallel road network in a city. For some special distributions of traffic handling capacities (thresholds) of the roads, the critical behavior of the jamming transition can be studied analytically. This has been compared with that for the asymmetric simple exclusion process in a single channel or road.