Cell Transmission Model
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Cell Transmission Model (CTM) is a popular numerical method proposed by Daganzo (1994) to solve the kinematic wave equation (Lighthill and Witham, 1955; Richards, 1956). Lebacque (1996) later showed that CTM is indeed the first order discrete Godunov approximation (Godunov, 1959).
Background
CTM predicts macroscopic traffic behavior on a given corridor by evaluating the flow and density at finite number of intermediate points at different time steps. This is done by dividing the corridor into homogeneous sections (hereafter called cells) and numbering them i=1, 2… n starting downstream. The length of the cell is chosen such that it is equal to the distance traveled by free-flow traffic in one evaluation time step. The traffic behavior is evaluated every time step starting at t=1,2…m. Initial and boundary conditions are required to iteratively evaluate each cell.