The effect of lateral interaction on traffic flow

• An extended cellular automaton model to describe lateral interactions.
• Lateral interactions with defects for different residual widths.
• Lateral interactions between vehicles in a two lane traffic flow.

We propose an extended cellular automaton model for traffic flow, taking into account lateral interactions with defects and between vehicles. The fundamental diagram for a given defects density on the road is studied. It is found that the plateau size increases linearly with the decreasing road width for little defects densities. Furthermore, the capacity increases linearly with the increasing road width. However, for a fixed road width, the capacity decreases exponentially with the increasing defects density. The lateral effects for non-mutual interactions between lanes and for the same maximal velocity is also investigated. It is found that the lateral effects on one lane are meaningful only when the density on the other lane is above the critical density. However, the lateral effects are always present if fast and slow lanes exist. Little differences have been found for the mutual interactions.