Traffic Flow - Traffic Bottleneck

Traffic Bottleneck

Traffic bottlenecks are disruption of traffic on a roadway caused either due to road design, traffic lights, and accidents. There are two general types of bottle necks, stationary and moving bottlenecks. Stationary bottlenecks are those that arise due to a disturbance that occurs due to a stationary situation like narrowing of a roadway, an accident. Moving bottlenecks on the other hand are those vehicles or vehicle behavior that causes the disruption in the vehicles which are upstream of the vehicle. Generally moving bottlenecks are caused by heavy trucks since they are slow moving vehicles with less acceleration and also lane changes.


Bottlenecks are important considerations because the impact the flow in traffic, the average speeds of the vehicles. The main consequence of a bottleneck is an immediate reduction in capacity of the roadway. The Federal Highway Authority has stated that 40% of all congestion is from bottlenecks Figure 16 shows the piechart of various causes of congestion. Figure 17 shows the common causes of congestion or bottlenecks.

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