Link-Based Multimodal Traffic Dynamics Model in Continuous-Time Framework

Computationally efficient models for multimodal traffic flows with inter-modal interactions are foundational for coordinated traffic management.

However, such models are lacking in the current literature.

This study introduces a multimodal link transmission model (M-LTM) accommodating both continuous road traffic and discrete tramway traffic at the network level.

M-LTM builds on a link model that captures the inter-modal interactions through the moving bottleneck theory.

We further develop node models describing the flow transfer, tram operations, and mode interactions at tram stops and intersections.

Specifically, the tram dwell process and dwell-induced congestion of road traffic are simulated at the stop node, and the intersection node model can reproduce queue spillback and tram priority.

Case studies are conducted on two synthetic one-node networks, a synthetic arterial network, and the real network of Dresden to demonstrate the predictive power and the applicability of the proposed model in network traffic analysis and management.

The GEH statistics of road traffic are below 4, and the average tram arrival time absolute errors are less than 10 seconds.