Multi anticipative bidirectional macroscopic traffic model considering cooperative driving strategy

Recent development of information and communication technologies (ICT) has enabled vehicles to timely communicate with others through wireless technologies, which will form future (intelligent) traffic systems (ITS) consisting of so-called connected vehicles. Cooperative driving with the connected vehicles is regarded as a promising driving pattern to significantly improve transportation efficiency and traffic safety. In the vast literature of traffic flow theory, there are continuum models considering multiple forward anticipative strategy, where the driver reacts to many leaders. Few study effort has been undertaken to include bidirectional driving strategy, where the driver reacts to both direct leader and direct follower, in the continuum traffic flow models. This paper aims to derive a continuum traffic model considering both multiple forward and backward driving strategy. It is shown that the derived model is a generalised version of a current continuum model for ITS and can improve important properties of such bidirectional (continuum) model.