Exploring the influence of traveller information on macroscopic fundamental diagrams

Macroscopic fundamental diagrams (MFD), proposed by Geroliminis and Daganzo, describe the network-wide average relation between the number of vehicles in the network and the output flow of the network. As pointed out by Geroliminis and Daganzo, several factors may influence MFD. The authors study the influence of traveller information on MFDs. The authors use microscopic simulation software TransModeler to model and simulate the dissemination of traveller information as well as the drivers´ route choice behaviours that had been affected by the information. The influences of several model parameters, including the informed percentage, the reroute time interval and the acceptable delay level, are also examined. To help preliminarily understand the information´s influence, the homogeneity of road sections´ density distribution under different model parameters is also investigated. To further understand information´s influence, incident information dissemination is investigated as a special case. An iterative model is proposed to depict traffic information´s influence on incident-induced congestion propagation. The analysis results are compared with simulation results to validate this model´s effectiveness.