HMI: Pre-warning Index of Traffic Jam Formation on Urban Freeway

In this paper, referring to the concepts of qualitative reasoning, the concepts, such as homogeneous measure index (HMI), are utilized to calculate the cross-lane synchronized degree of the traffic flow. The actual data of Beijing Third Ring Road are collected to describe the procedure of formation of traffic jam, and the concepts proposed in this paper are used to clearly illustrate such procedure. From the empirical data of traffic flow, we find out that for a multi-lane road, before the formation of traffic jam, the HMI of the traffic flow will change abruptly and the state transition from homogeneous (H-S) to non-homogeneous state (N-S) is likely occur. Therefore, the HMI can be considered as a pre-warning index of the formation of traffic jam.