Width-Based Cell Transmission Model for Heterogeneous and Undisciplined Traffic Streams

Traffic streams in many developing countries consist of various modes of transport, with high heterogeneity in driver behavior. Modeling these types of traffic streams, in which traffic rules (speed limit, lane discipline, etc.) are not strictly followed, is a complex task. A review of the existing literature shows that there is a lack of traffic flow models that model the behavior of heterogeneous and undisciplined traffic streams. Like other undisciplined traffic streams, there are no speed limits (hence no speed enforcement) on most of the roads in Karachi, Pakistan. Lane discipline is also not observed by drivers, which results in a varying number of traffic lanes on a road. Therefore, most of the existing traffic flow models/simulation packages developed for disciplined traffic streams cannot appropriately model traffic streams without lane discipline. This research proposes a width-based cell transmission model (WCTM) by developing a fundamental flow-density diagram whose parameters are a function of the road width. Extensive field data have been collected from a selected arterial in Karachi for development of the fundamental traffic flow diagram. The values of the computed parameters are significantly different than the values reported in the literature. The piecewise-linear flow-density relation is developed by optimally estimating the breakpoints. Results show that the quadrilateral and pentagonal-shaped fundamental diagrams fit better with the collected data in comparison with the triangular-shaped fundamental diagram. The proposed WCTM is applied to selected segments of an arterial and results show that the WCTM was able to accurately model different traffic conditions.