Jam Formation of Traffic Flow in Harbor Tunnel

This paper reports a study concerning occurrence and growth of traffic jam in a harbor tunnel. The single-lane with three sections (downgrade, flat, and upgrade) is taken into account and they are characterized with different velocity limit. At the low density, the traffic current increases linearly with density and saturates at some values of immediately density. As the density increases, the traffic jam appears firstly before the upgrade section and then extends to the downgrade section. Additionally, the relationships of the velocity and headway against position in different densities are obtained from simulation. These results clearly clarify where and when the traffic jam appears. Finally, the critical densities are derived via the theoretical analysis before and after the discontinuous fronts and the theoretical results are consistent with the critical values of simulation results. (interdisciplinary physics and related areas of science and technology)