Numerical Investigation of Traffic on a Highway with Varying Number of Lanes

The paper is devoted to the investigation of features of traffic flows on roads with varying number of lanes. The influence of road geometry on traffic as a whole is under consideration. Due to perturbations that occur in traffic when cars are changing lanes the effect of local road widening can be significant. It causes the average velocity drop both upstream and downstream from the widening. To study this effect the macroscopic quasigasdynamic model, as well as the microscopic cellular automata model are used. These original models developed by the authors earlier are compared to each other and verified by comparing with the macroscopic Kerner-Konhaeuser model using some test predictions. Results of numerical experiments with different traffic flow parameters are presented. There is good agreement between the results obtained by the proposed models.