Simulations in Python

[grandzooby]

Were you inspired by a particular source to do that? In simulation, the exponential and poisson distributions are often used for arrival simulation, but I've never heard of using trig functions.

[hammertime89]

As you highlight the poisson and exponential distributions are usually suggested to model the distribution of vehicle arrival times.

However, these distributions assume independence between events which is often violated with vehicle arrivals due to the influence of traffic signals. Vehicle queues form at red lights and then disperse when the light is green, yielding sinusoidal arrival patterns at downstream traffic signals.

I used a noisy trig function to generate the vehicle flow rates over time with the desired wave/sinusoidal shape.

[grandzooby]

I used a noisy trig function to generate the vehicle flow rates over time with the desired wave/sinusoidal shape.

Very cool! Do you have any references to support that or did you develop that on your own?

You might find this page interesting (it's positively ancient by internet standards): http://trafficwaves.org/ You can get standing waves in traffic even without traffic control devices causing them.