Case study of urban expressway traffic flow based on high-order continuum model

This paper first presents a brief literature review of the existing macroscopic traffic flow models for expressways. And then, based on the real traffic data for both congested and uncongested flow of the expressways in Shanghai of China, an investigation is conducted on the modeling performance of the Papageorgiou model, a commonly used high-order continuum model. Parameter identification of the model is formulated as a parameter optimization problem which is solved by a heuristic searching procedure. Moreover, a stability analysis with respect to parameter changes is made. Analysis results show the model has a satisfactory performance in modeling the complicated non-linear urban expressway traffic flow behaviors in China. This paper's work can support the design of the expressway traffic control system.