Urban Short-Term Traffic Flow Forecasting Based on the Semi-Variable Cell Transmission Model

The accuracy of the urban short-term traffic flow prediction directly affects the realtime and reliability of the urban traffic control and management. To improve the accuracy and usefulness of the urban short-term traffic flow prediction, the Semi-variable Cell Transmission Model (SCTM) is proposed based on the cell transmission model. According to the traffic flow conservation, the cell length and the cell density are introduced into the SCTM, which overcomes the limit that the cell length must be uniform, in order to ensure the applicability and usefulness of the urban short-term traffic flow prediction based on the SCTM. Furthermore, the SCTM limits the scope of the cell length and sets the time interval to meet the requirement of the uniformity of the traffic distribution in the cells to improve the accuracy of the flow prediction. Finally, the SCTM is used to predict the short-term traffic flow in the urban road, and the predicted data are compared with the actual data. The analysis results indicate that the short-term traffic flow forecasting by the SCTM is satisfactory.