Hybrid models of traffic flow : impacts of bounded vehicle accelerations

Hybrid Models of Traffic Flow: Impacts of Bounded Vehicle Accelerations by Jorge Andrés Laval Doctor of Philosophy in Engineering-Civil and Environmental Engineering University of California, Berkeley Professor Carlos F. Daganzo, Chair This dissertation develops extensions to the kinematic wave theory of moving bottlenecks that allow the formulation of parsimonious traffic flow models that turn out to match field data with unprecedented accuracy. These ”hybrid models” explicitly incorporate the effects of a stream of underperforming vehicles, whose trajectories are computed endogenously using realistic accelerations. Hybrid models exhibit important practical advantages stemming from their simplicity and mathematical stability. They do not amplify errors, they require few easily observable parameters and they can be validated by parts. Two practical applications are included: the effects of heavy vehicles on uphill bottlenecks, and the effects of lane-changing maneuvers. In the first case, we found