Some Properties of a Multi-Lane Extension of the Kinematic Wave Model

This paper extends an existing continuum multi-lane formulation for traffic flow, provides a discrete formulation for its numerical solution, and show initial results. The new formulation enables a natural treatment of boundary conditions such as merges, diverges, lane-drops and moving bottlenecks. The proposed model needs few extra parameters and is parsimonious. The look-ahead distance, for example, induces that non-local conditions affect the flow at any time-space point, causing smooth regime changes and fast waves. We find that as the look-ahead distance tends to zero, the solution tends to the KW one. The example of a lane-drop is analyzed.