On kinetic theory methods in vehicular flow

Similarly to the treatment of diluted gases, kinetic methods are formulated for the study of unidirectional freeway traffic. From these it is possible to construct fluid-dynamic equations which in comparison with heuristic fluid-dynamic models have the advantage of just some adjustable parameters although they have some other restrictions. In this work the comparison between two macroscopic models which are based on a kinetic traffic equation is shown. On the other hand, there will be presented some advances to attempt to generalize some restrictions of the kinetic formulation in order to study the synchronization phenomena, which is a very interesting transitory phase between free flow and traffic jams.