Macroscopic Modeling and Simulation of Freeway Traffic Flow

This paper illustrates the macroscopic modeling and simulation of Interstate 80 Eastbound Freeway in the Bay Area. Traffic flow and occupancy data from loop detectors are used for calibrating the model and specifying the inputs to the simulation. The freeway is calibrated based on the Link-Node Cell Transmission Model and missing ramp flow data are estimated using an iterative learning-based imputation scheme. An ad-hoc, graphical comparison-based fault detection scheme is used to identify faulty measurements. The simulation results using the calibrated model exhibit good agreement with loop detector measurements with total density error of 3.3% and total flow error of 7.1% over the 23 mile stretch of the freeway under investigation and the particular day for which the ramp flows were imputed.