Cellular automation models and traffic flow

Abstract

A cellular automaton model for the description of traffic flow is investigated. It generalizes asymmetric exclusion models which have attracted a lot of interest in the past. The authors calculate the so-called fundamental diagram (flow versus density) for parallel dynamics using an improved mean-field approximation which takes into account short-range correlations. For maximum velocity they find that the simplest of these non-trivial approximations gives the exact result. For higher velocities their results are in excellent agreement with numerical data.