The Effect of Deceleration Strips Upon Traffic Flow

We propose a new single-lane cellular automaton model to study the effect of deceleration strips upon traffic flow. By performing numerical simulations under the periodic boundary condition, we find that the deceleration strips could be considered as the headstream of traffic jams and they are apt to cause the small scale traffic jam. The maximum flow is decreased evidently when there are some deceleration strips on the road. But the increase of the number of deceleration strips only influences the maximum flow slightly. Furthermore, if the vehicle density is high enough, the influence of deceleration strips could be ignored. Therefore, the disadvantage of the deceleration strips may be ignored in city traffic because of the high density.