A New Cellular Automaton Model for Urban Two-Way Road Networks

A new cellular automaton (CA) model is proposed to simulate traffic dynamics in urban two-way road network systems. The NaSch rule is adopted to represent vehicle movements on road sections. Two novel rules are proposed to move the vehicles in intersection areas, and an additional rule is developed to avoid the “gridlock” phenomenon. Simulation results show that the network fundamental diagram is very similar to that of road traffic flow. We found that the randomization probability and the maximum vehicle speed have significant impact on network traffic mobility for free-flow state. Their effect may be weak when the network is congested.