Traffic dynamics on a double layer coupled network considering physical queuing

The development of modern economy makes the problem of traffic congestion increasingly serious. Many real traffic systems can be abstracted as that a variety of networks coupled and interconnected with each other. In this paper, the traffic dynamics on a double layer coupled network system is studied based on cellular automata model considering physical queuing. We explore the effect of maximal velocities in the two layer networks on the network capacity, and the mean and standard deviation of travel time. The results show that the increase of upper network velocity is beneficial to the traffic capacity and the efficiency of long-distance travel, but will also lead to larger deviation and lower reliability. We explain the phenomena by studying the usage of upper network. Finally, we investigate the vehicle distribution by adopting the Gini coefficient. It is found that the increase of upper network speed will make the traffic load distributed more uniformly in the system.