Modeling and Simulation of Traffic Flow Using Cellular Automata

Recently, Cellular Automata (CA) models are developed and studied mostly for homogeneous traffic flow. In the current paper an attempt has been made to use CA models to study heterogeneous traffic flows which are common in real life situation. For a better representation of different types of vehicles, cell sizes have been reduced. A different set of CA rules to control the light and heavy vehicles on a two-lane freeway mainline to move forward and to change lane have been formulated. The corresponding refined CA models are capable of capturing the essential features of traffic flows. Simulation results for light vehicles and for heavy vehicles with and without perturbation are presented. Vehicular trajectories and traffic patterns for light and for heavy vehicles under deterministic and stochastic conditions are displayed. The simulation results obtained here reveal noticeable traffic flow patterns with free flow, wide moving jam and synchronized flow phases. Keywords-Cellular automata, Heterogeneous traffic, Spatiotemporal Traffic Patterns, synchronized flow, Forward and Lane-changing rule, Perturbation, Simulation.