Comparison of global and local strategies on the performance of a two-lane traffic system

Abstract

We use an extended Nagel-Schreckenberg model without the stochastic deceleration feature to simulate a two-lane traffic flow. On the log<v> vs log(ρ) plot, three nonlinear regimes were observed: a low density regime (ρ < 0.1) that decays exponentially and a high density (ρ > 0.4) and medium density regimes (0.1 < ρ < 0.4) regimes that are characterized by power law trends. We investigated how <v> changes in the presence and absence of strategies. We consider two sets of strategies on switching lanes; adaptive (optimizing tolerance) and nonadaptive (global rule). Among the tolerance-adapting strategies, only one particular rule (the increasing rule) is at par with the no-strategy case; the rest decreases the <v> performance. For the nonadaptive strategy set, the performance under all three rules based on real traffic rules are better than the no-strategy case at the high density regime. On the other hand, at lower densities, the nonadaptive strategy has a negative effect. Hence, global nonadaptive rules on switching that bear resemblance to actual rules on the road are most relevant in the case of high density situations, while interestingly, individual adaptive tendencies are most relevant at other regimes.