Capacity Drop on Freeways: Traffic Dynamics, Theory and Modeling

Earlier studies on the traffic flow on freeways reveal that queue discharge rate cannot
reach as high as the free-flow capacity. This important phenomenon is called the
“Capacity drop”, which indicates that the potential freeway capacity cannot be fully
utilized when discharging traffic jams. Even though a majority of empirical and analytical
research has already been conducted to understand the capacity drop, several
relevant challenges still need to be addressed. Those challenges include (1) characterizing
more empirical features of the capacity drop, (2) incorporating the capacity drop
into macroscopic models, (3) revealing mechanism related to driver behaviors behind
the capacity drop and incorporating the mechanism into microscopic models. This
thesis fills the research gap.