The effect of diffusion in a new viscous continuum traffic model

In this Letter, we propose a new continuum traffic model with a viscous term. The linear stability condition for viscous shock waves is derived. We derive the Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation near the neutral stability line. Then we investigate the effect of the viscous term by numerical simulations. The results show that viscosity may induce oscillations and the amplitude of the oscillation increases as the viscosity coefficient increases. This agrees with the linear stability condition. The local clusters are compressed by increasing the viscosity coefficient in the cluster study.