Speed dependent stochasticity capacitates Newell model for synchronized flow and oscillation growth pattern

This paper has incorporated the stochasticity into the Newell car following model. Three stochastic driving factors have been considered: (i) Driver’s acceleration is stochastic and bounded. (ii) Driver’s deceleration includes stochastic component, which is depicted by a deceleration with the randomization probability that is assumed to increase with the speed. (iii) Vehicles in the jam state have a larger randomization probability. Two simulation scenarios are conducted to test the model. In the first scenario, traffic flow on a circular road is investigated, and the empirical characteristics of the synchronized traffic flow can be simulated. In the second scenario, traffic flow pattern induced by a rubberneck bottleneck is studied, and the simulated traffic oscillations are consistent with that in the NGSIM data. Moreover, two experiments of model calibration and validation are conducted. The first is to calibrate and validate using experimental data, which illustrates that the concave growth pattern has been simulated successfully. The second is to calibrate and cross validate vehicles’ trajectories using NGISM data, which also exhibits good performance of the model. Therefore, our study highlights the importance of speed dependent stochasticity in traffic flow modeling, which cannot be ignored as in most car-following studies.