A new mechanism for metastability of under-saturated traffic responsible for time-delayed traffic breakdown at the signal

In this paper we introduce a new mechanism of metastability of under-saturated traffic at the signal that is responsible for a time-delayed traffic breakdown revealed by Kerner (2011). In our model, we assume that the metastability of under-saturated traffic at the signal is caused by a dependence of the mean time of driver acceleration from a queue at the signal on the driver’s stopped time within the queue. With the use of Nagel–Schreckenberg model, we demonstrate that this mechanism of the metastability of city traffic can lead to the time-delayed traffic breakdown at the signal.