Modelling highway bottlenecks in balanced vehicular traffic


The balanced vehicular traffic model (BVT model) is a macroscopic traffic model that describes traffic flow 
as a hyperbolic system of balance laws. It generalizes the traffic model of Aw, Rascle, Greenberg and 
Zhang by introducing in the momentum equation a new source term, which can become negative due 
to the finite reaction and relaxation times of drivers. The model is capable of reproducing multivalued 
fundamental diagrams, the metastability of free traffic flow at the onset of instabilities and wide moving 
jams. Based on previous work we describe the coupling conditions for the Riemann problem of the system and apply them to highway bottlenecks. Our numerical simulations show the appearance of synchronized flow at highway bottlenecks. We exemplarily discuss the consequences of the new source term for the solutions at bottlenecks, focussing on the model's ability to reproduce the capacity drop at lane drop bottlenecks.