Jamming Transition in CA Models for Traffic Flow

TL;DR

This paper investigates the jamming transition in cellular automaton traffic models, showing that noise removes the sharp critical point observed in deterministic models, leading to a smeared transition.

Contribution

It provides numerical evidence that noise eliminates critical behavior in the jamming transition of cellular automaton traffic models.

Findings

Deterministic models show a critical point with diverging correlation length.

Noise removes the critical behavior, smearing out the transition.

Remnants of the critical point are observed even with noise.

Abstract

The cellular automaton model for traffic flow exhibits a jamming transition from a free-flow phase to a congested phase. In the deterministic case this transition corresponds to a critical point with diverging correlation length. We present data from numerical simulations which suggest the absence of critical behavior in the presence of noise. The transition of the deterministic case is smeared out and one only observes the remnants of the critical point.