Impacts of different types of ramps on the traffic flow

The impact of the on- and off-ramps in a cellular automaton model for the traffic flow is studied. We include to the model the effect of spacing between the on- and the off-ramps on a same periodic road at a intersection (interchange) with another road. First, we use the Nagel-Schreckenberg (NaSch) model (J. Phys. 1 2 (1992) 2221) without modifications to extract the basic phenomena of traffic flow, and in the following step we focus our investigation on the NaSch model with velocity-dependent randomization (VDR model) (Eur. Phys. J. B 5 (1998) 793) to examine the other system behaviors. Our results provide evidence that the metastable states and the phase separation can occur in the same way like in the models with local site defects. (c) 2004 Published by Elsevier B.V.