Study on the Initial Effects of Cellular Automaton Traffic Models from Energy Dissipation

In this paper, based on TT, BJH and VDR models with the “slow-to-start” rule, we studied the initial effects on energy dissipation of traffic flow and the characteristics of traffic jamming. Numerical results show that different initial condition affects significantly energy dissipation under the periodic boundary condition. Energy dissipation respectively breaks down at density ρ1/(1+v_max) and ρ0.5 due to the effect of “slow-to-start” from initial uniform and non-uniform distribution of vehicles, which corresponds to the twice phase transitions of traffic. Such situations do not emerge in the initial stochastic distribution and a compact jam. Therefore, the initial condition significantly affects the energy dissipation and traffic jamming in these three models.