SELF-ORGANIZED CRITICALITY IN 1D TRAFFIC FLOW MODEL WITH INFLOW OR OUTFLOW

The asymmetric simple-exclusion model with parallel dynamics (the deterministic cellular automaton 184) is extended to take into account the exchange of cars between different lanes on a multi-lane roadway. The traffic flow model is presented by the one-dimensional asymmetric exclusion model with injection or extraction of particles. The system is driven asymptotically into a steady state exhibiting a self-organized criticality. The typical interval [s] between consecutive jams scales as [s] approximate to L(upsilon) with upsilon = 0.62 +/- 0.04 where L is the system size. It is shown that the jam-interval distribution n(s)(L) satisfies the finite-size scaling form n(s)(L)approximate to L(-beta) f(s/L(upsilon)) with beta = 2 upsilon.