New OZ traffic model helps cities crack bottlenecks, decrease commute times

Thursday, March 18, 2021

New research says that a ‘flow model’ devised by Australian researchers could drastically slash public transport commuter times during peak periods on some of the busiest roads in major cities.

When this flow model was implemented to improve the worst traffic bottlenecks across Melbourne, commuters saved close to 2000 hours of travel time during a single morning peak period (7am-9am) and approximately 11,000 hours of passenger travel time during a normal weekday.

Ameliorating major traffic bottlenecks also contributed to a more than 23 per cent improvement in reliability of Melbourne’s public transport network, on average, during weekdays and by up to 26 per cent on weekends.

Most bottlenecks were those that cut through the Melbourne central business district, yet links connecting suburban sites such as La Trobe and Monash universities, and Chadstone shopping centre to the metro train network were among the most critical bottlenecks in Melbourne’s transport network.

Research by Monash University and RMIT University, published in the prestigious international journal Nature Communications, introduced a novel flow model – built upon the so called Unaffected Demand (UD) concept – to examine the impact of road congestion on travelling passengers using the bus and tram networks.

A flow network is the mathematical model for any system with a network structure where connections are a means for carrying some kind of flow from one component to another.

Traffic and public transport systems can be perfectly modelled as complex networks where different entities (intersections or stops) are mapped to a set of components (or network nodes), and the means for transportation of flow demand between these locations are represented as connections between the nodes.

“Whether it be passengers in transport systems, or energy in power grids, the primary purpose of most critical infrastructures is to carry some kind of flow between different locations,” Professor Hai Vu, research co-author and Director of Monash University’s Institute of Transport Studies, said.

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