TRAFFIC THEORY:
Jams, Waves, and Clusters
Dirk Helbing and Martin Treiber
One thing is certain--the world's roadways are not getting less congested. Physicists have been taking a glance at traffic jams recently, in an effort to learn something about the underlying behavior of a particularly familiar many-body system: the modern multilane superhighway. In their Perspective, Helbing and Treiber describe current work in modeling traffic flow as a fluid. The insights gained may one day aid in traffic management.
The authors are at the Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 57/III, 70550 Stuttgart, Germany. E-mail: helbing{at}theo2.physik.uni-stuttgart.de