TIME HEADWAY DISTRIBUTION OF TRAFFIC FLOW

Arrival distribution of vehicles is one of the basic characteristics of traffic flow. Since average time headway is inversely proportional to the traffic volume it has been considered as an approach of the study of traffic capacity. Arrival distribution is essential to deal with the traffic flow stochastically in the problems such as queing problems of crossing or merging traffic, and various traffic simulation.The paper deals mainly with congested traffic flow which causes so many traffic problems. The objects of this study is to obtain and analyse the characteristics of actual traffic headway distributions and to find theoretical distribution models which fit well to them.Several field observations were carried out and a theoretical distribution of traffic headway is proposed based on the observed data. The theoretical distribution fits very well to the actual ones.