Traffic Flow Dynamics: Data, Models and Simulation

One of the most comprehensive views of traffic flow theory, its modeling hypothesis, the models built on them and the data needed to work with these models.

This is a great book for transportation operations. Thou there is almost no price difference between Kindle version and hard-copy. As an old-school person, I would rather pay more money to get the hard-copy version. The book is really extensive and has a lot of interesting examples. It is a good combination of theory, practice, simulation and data results and the questions/examples are very well up-to-date. However, you might find wrong correlations or equations etc. in the earlier versions. Thou the authors are very easy to reach and if you let them know of the wrong stuff in the book, they are very glad to correct.

The potential buyer should be aware that this book is on traffic *flow* models which is a different (and much more dynamic) approach compared to the more traditional "traffic models" such as the four-step scheme of classical urban transportation planning: If you want to know whether that new bridge will solve all traffic problems in your city, use the four-step scheme. If you want to learn the mechanisms behind stop-and-go traffic (and how to avoid it), be informed on the methods of real-time traffic-state recognition, or test whether the proposed new traffic-adaptive signal control scheme will work, use traffic flow simulation. The book covers most of the models used in today's simulation software.There are several scientific books on traffic flow out there. Nevertheless, this book seems to be the only textbook on this (rather specialized) topic that is accessible to undergraduates (and even college) students doing traffic-related project work. A "unique selling point" are the many in-text boxes for testing the understanding and about 50 solved problems (the solutions section alone covers about 70 pages) which are particularly useful for this group of readers. Generally, the problems cover a wide range of difficulty. While some require solving differential equations or other advanced techniques, many others give amazing insights using remarkably little math: When being stuck in a traffic jam, would you like to know why the other lanes always tend to go faster, regardless of which lane you chose? The solution is in the book (p. 471).At the end of each chapter, "Further Reading" blocks provide references to other work. Nevertheless, the sample of references is rather limited - at least compared to monographs of this size. For a textbook, I think this is OK, though.Some "greener" topics which I find very interesting are only touched in this book: Pedestrians, non-motorized traffic in general, and also how to model consumptions and emissions of hybrid and all-electrical cars by physics-based load models. Finally, in the applications part, I miss a chapter on signal control: Testing new control algorithms - particularly the more advanced traffic-adaptive schemes - requires heavy use of microscopic simulations.

While everybody experienced traffic jams, only few people are aware that they can be described with mathematical equations as though cars are physical particles. At least this is what the authors (who are physicists themselves) claim in their textbook. But is this really the case? By giving many real-world examples and devoting a whole part to empirical data, this book convinces me that this is true in most of the situations treated by the authors. It is particularly amazing that there are even some "traffic flow constants" such as a "jam propagation constant" stating that stop-and-go waves and other moving jam boundaries always move at the same velocity, namely about 15 km/h opposite to the traffic direction.As the subtitle implies, this book consists of three parts. The first part covers all the usual data sources including the common stationary detector data but also different sorts of floating-car and trajectory data that become increasingly relevant in modern traffic technology.The second and largest part covers most of the mathematical models of traffic flow: Microscopic models treating each vehicle-driver pair individually, and macroscopic models taking the notion "traffic flow" literally by introducing variables such as density, flux, or local speed. This part also includes directions of how to implement the models in simulators and gives hints on the best numerical methods and how to avoid numerical instabilities. Two big chapters focus on parameter estimation ("calibration and validation") and on traffic flow instabilities. The math in the latter is substantially more demanding than in the rest of this book.The last part covers some applications: Traffic-state recognition, travel-time estimation, fuel consumption and emission modeling, and traffic flow optimization. I found the last two chapters particularly interesting: If you want to separate the truth from the myth behind several common fuel saving rules, the chapter on consumption modeling is for you. If you want to know why temporary speed limits at critical road sections help avoid breakdowns, you may turn to the chapter on optimization.The mathematical requirements vary: While most of the chapters can be readily understood by undergraduates or even college students, the Chapters 9 ("macroscopic models with dynamic velocity") and 16 ("stability analysis") are heavy on math. In any case, the many solved problems dispersed throughout the book help the reader to learn more on this narrow but fascinating subject.

This book provides the fundamental and the state-of-the-art concepts regarding traffic dynamics, and is definitely recommended for, particularly, the researchers in the domain of intelligent transportation systems where the focus is put on to platooning systems, microscopic/macroscopic models or similar fields. However, whether the contents cover the concepts specific to the research interest of the researcher, should be checked beforehand. And, of course, the book arrived timely and in a very good condition.

The book arrived exelent condition and with in short time. Perfect service. I will use amazon service in the future as vell.