Eur. Phys. J. B 63, 127-133 (2008)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2008-00219-5

Urban traffic from the perspective of dual graph

¹ School of Engineering Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, P.R. China
² Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Curtin University of Technology, WA, 6845 Perth, Australia
³ Department of Electronic Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, 85287-5706, USA

Corresponding author: ^a humaobin@ustc.edu.cn

Received: 18 February 2008
Revised: 22 April 2008
Published online: 6 June 2008

Abstract

Urban traffic is modeled using a dual graph representation of the urban transport network, where roads are mapped to nodes and intersections are mapped to links. The proposed model considers both the navigation of the vehicles in the network and the motion of the vehicles along roads. The vehicle-holding ability of roads and the vehicle-turning ability at intersections are also incorporated. The overall handling ability of the system can be quantified by a phase transition from free flow to congestion. Simulations show that the system's handling ability greatly depends on the topology of the transportation network. In general, a well-planned grid can hold more vehicles, and its overall handling ability is much greater than that of a growing self-organized network.