A Novel Macroscopic Dynamic Loading Model and its Properties

Existing macroscopic dynamic loading models (Linear travel time, Divided linear travel time and Point-Queue models), which are based on representation of link properties as a whole and fully comply with the requirements of the dynamic traffic assignment (DTA) procedure, are widely used in many DTA studies. This is because of their lower implementation and computational costs. DTA literature consistently suggesting alternative models but many of them do not comply with the required properties for their use in DTA and if the model fulfils these requirements, the computational and implementation issues in these models are such demanding that their general use is very limited (e.g. Cell Transmission model). This paper presents a novel model (Adnan-Fowkes model), which utilise the similar modelling framework through which Point-Queue model was developed and at the same time addresses the drawbacks exist in the Point-Queue and Liner travel time models which are due to their simple mathematical formulation. The proposed model is developed with a simple mathematical construction and it is as easy to implement as Point-Queue and Linear travel time models. The paper comprehensively discusses the properties which are desirable for the use of any model in DTA and analytically illustrates that the Adnan-Fowkes model is successfully fulfilling all these requirements. Numerical experiments are also conducted for comparison of the behaviour of the Adnan-Fowkes model along with the Point-Queue and Linear travel time models. The results of these experiments provide more useful insight for the Adnan-Fowkes model and support the characteristics of this model which are mentioned analytically in earlier sections of this paper.