IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ortrsc/v2y1968i3p233-251.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Discrete Markov Model of Vehicular Traffic

Author

Listed:
  • Michael C. Dunne

    (General Motors Research Laboratories, Warren, Michigan)

  • Richard W. Rothery

    (General Motors Research Laboratories, Warren, Michigan)

  • Renfrey B. Potts

    (University of California, Berkeley, California)

Abstract

For a number of years the Poisson process has been used as a model to describe the time series of events of vehicles passing a point on a roadway. In its simplest form the Poisson model does not take into account the finite size of the vehicles nor does it properly describe the characteristic bunching of traffic that commonly occurs, for example, on a two-lane road when passing is hindered. To give a more comprehensive description of traffic, various extensions of the Poisson model and a variety of other models have been proposed, with varying success. In this paper a discrete Markov model of traffic is proposed. The model is an extension of the simple binomial model and accounts for the bunching tendency of traffic by assuming correlations between successive vehicles. A description is given of the time-arrival experiments that were carried out to test the model and the statistical analysis of the results of these experiments is discussed. In addition, several theoretical aspects of the model are examined.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael C. Dunne & Richard W. Rothery & Renfrey B. Potts, 1968. "A Discrete Markov Model of Vehicular Traffic," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 2(3), pages 233-251, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ortrsc:v:2:y:1968:i:3:p:233-251
    DOI: 10.1287/trsc.2.3.233
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/trsc.2.3.233
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/trsc.2.3.233?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Li, Baibing, 2017. "Stochastic modeling for vehicle platoons (I): Dynamic grouping behavior and online platoon recognition," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 364-377.
    2. Li, Baibing, 2017. "Stochastic modeling for vehicle platoons (II): Statistical characteristics," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 378-393.
    3. Archilla, Ricardo & Morrall, John, 1996. "Traffic characteristics on two-lane highway downgrades," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 119-133, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:ortrsc:v:2:y:1968:i:3:p:233-251. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.