Traffic Jams
Traffic Jams
This chapter considers the occurrence of traffic jams in the flow of moving automobiles as an example of complex collective behavior emerging from the interactions of system elements. It begins with a discussion of the basic design principle of an automobile traffic model and the numerical implementation of the model using the Python code. It then describes a representative simulation involving an ensemble of 300 cars initially at rest and distributed randomly, with a mean spacing of 10 units. It also examines how the traffic jam model behaves, traffic jams as avalanches, and the self-organized criticality of car traffic. The chapter includes exercises and further computational explorations, along with a suggested list of materials for further reading.
Keywords: traffic jams, automobile traffic, Python code, avalanches, self-organized criticality
Princeton Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.