A Real-Time Traffic Simulation System

This article studies the usefulness of parallel processing in real-time traffic-flow simulation based on continuum modeling of traffic dynamics. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD’s) methods for solving simple macroscopic traffic-flow continuum models have been studied and efficiently implemented in traffic simulation codes (on serial computers) in the past. We designed a traffic-flow simulation code and mapped it onto a parallel computer architecture. This traffic simulation system is capable of simulating freeway traffic flow in real time. Tests with real traffic data collected from the freeway network in the metropolitan area of Minneapolis, MN, were used to validate the accuracy and computational rate of the parallel simulation system. The execution time for a 2-h traffic-flow simulation of about 200 619 vehicles in an 18-mi freeway, which takes 2.35 min of computer time (on a single-processor computer simulator), took only 5.25 s on the parallel traffic simulation system. This parallel system has a lot of potential for real-time traffic engineering applications.