TSINGHUA SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

ISSNl l 1007-0214l l 15/ 18l l pp252-254

Volume 14, Number 2, April 2009
Modeling of Spacing Distribution of Queuing Vehicles at Signalized
Junctions Using Random-Matrix Theory
*
JIN Xuexiang (), SU Yuelong (), ZHANG Yi ( ),
WEI Zheng ( ), LI Li ( )
**
Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Abstract: The modeling of headway/spacing between two consecutive vehicles in a queue has many appli-
cations in traffic flow theory and transport practice. Most known approaches have only studied vehicles on
freeways. This paper presents a model for the spacing distribution of queuing vehicles at a signalized junc-
tion based on random-matrix theory. The spacing distribution of a Gaussian symplectic ensemble (GSE) fits
well with recently measured spacing distribution data. These results are also compared with measured
spacing distribution observed for the car parking problem. Vehicle stationary queuing and vehicle parking
have different spacing distributions due to different driving patterns.
Key words: spacing distribution; queuing vehicles; Coulomb gas; Gaussian symplectic ensemble (GSE)
Introduction
In traffic engineering, the spacing is usually defined as
the distance between two successive vehicles measured
from the same common feature on the vehicles (e.g.,
rear axle or front bumper). Since the spacing distribu-
tion reflects the un-measurable interactions or poten-
tials between vehicles that govern their motions, there
are increasing numbers of investigations to explain the
complex dynamics of vehicular traffic flow, for exam-
ple, phase transitions
[1]
.
One interesting topic is the spacing distributions
observed during the formation of and transitions be-
tween different vehicle queues such as static queues
(vehicles parked in a line in a parking lot, or queues of
fully-stopped vehicles at signalized intersections) and
moving queues which may contain various inter-arrival
and inter-departure queuing interactions
[1-3]
. This paper
focuses on the less studied static queues.
The vehicle parking problem was first introduced by
Renyi
[4]
as: how many randomly parking motorists can
be accommodated on average on a straight street of a
given length. The most famous solution to this ques-
tion is based on random sequential adsorption (RSA),
which analyzes the problem as an irreversible process
in which particles are adsorbed sequentially and with-
out overlap onto randomly chosen positions on a sur-
face. The one-dimensional RSA problem can be solved
analytically when all the vehicles have the same
length
[5-7]
. However, this method is difficult to apply to
other vehicle queues.
Abul-Magd
[8]
used random-matrix theory (RMT) to
study the car-parking problem, where the nature of
interactions between the particles in a Dysons Cou-
lomb gas model is assumed to be consistent with the
tendency of drivers to park their cars near each other
but at the same time to keep a sufficient distance for
departure. They showed that measured gap-size distri-
butions of parked cars on a number of roads in central
London could be well represented by the spacing


Received: 2008-03-19; revised: 2008-12-02
*
Partly supported by the National Key Basic Research and Devel-
opment (973) Program of China (No. 2006CB705506), the National
High-Tech Research and Development (863) Program of China
(Nos. 2006AA11Z229, 2007AA11Z222), and the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (Nos. 60374059, 50708055)
**
To whom correspondence should be addressed.
E-mail: li-li@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn; Tel: 86-10-62782071
JIN Xuexiang () et alModeling of Spacing Distribution of Queuing Vehicles at Signalized 253
distribution of a Gaussian unitary ensemble (GUE).
In a similar way, this study uses the Dysons Cou-
lomb gas model to explain the formation of fully-
stopped vehicle queues at signalized intersections. The
spacing distribution predicted using Gaussian sym-
plectic ensemble (GSE) of random matrices is in good
agreement with the empirical data.
1 Coulomb Gas Model and Queuing
Vehicles
Consider a gas of charges whose positions are
denoted by
N
1
x ,
2
x , ,
N
x with these charges being
free to move on the line , as shown in Fig.
1. Assume the potential energy of this Coulomb gas is
0 x < < +
2
1
ln | |
2
i i
i i j
V x x
<
=
j
x , i, j

=1, , N (1)
where the first term represents a harmonic potential
that attracts each charge independently towards the
coordinate origin and the second represents an electro-
static repulsion between each pair of these charges.

Fig. 1 Queuing vehicles at a signalized junction ana-
logue to the Dyson gas
Let ( ) P s denote the nearest-neighbor spacing dis-
tribution of these charges. An accurate solution for
( ) P s is not easy to find. However, for such systems,
the probability density function for the position of the
charges can be approximately calculated using the so
called Wigner surmise
[9]
.
Suppose the gas is in thermodynamic equilibrium at
temperature 1 / ( ) T k| = , where is the Boltzmann
constant,
k
| is inverse temperature. The probability
density function is given by the Boltzmann factor ob-
tained from the Gibbs-Boltzmann canonical distribu-
tion by integration over the particles momenta,
1 2
( , , , ) exp( )
N
P x x x C V | = ! (2)
where C is a normalizing constant.

Equations (1) and (2) can be combined to give the
Wigner surmise solutions for ( ) P s with the addi-
tional assumption of | . The role of | denotes the
level-repulsion power of the matrix eigenvalues. Par-
ticularly, Wigner
[9]
suggested that for 0 | = , the solu-
tion is the well-known Poisson ensembles (PE),
Poisson
( ) exp( ) P s = s (3)
For 1 | = , the solution is Gaussian orthogonal en-
sembles (GOE),
2
GOE
1
( ) exp
2 4
P s s s
|
=

\ .
|
|
(4)
For 2 | = , the solution is GUE,

2
GUE 2
32 4
( ) exp

2
P s s s
|
=

\ .
|
|
(5)
For 4 | = , the solution is GSE,
18
4
GSE 6 3
2 6
( ) exp
3 9
2
4
P s s
|
=

\ .
s
|
|
(6)
As discussed by Rawal and Rodgers
[7]
, the move-
ments of different size vehicles can be abstracted into
point particles, because only the spacing distribution is
interested here. This analysis assumes that the queuing
dynamics of vehicles at a signalized junction can also
be approximately modeled by this Coulomb gas model.
The single-particle term in Eq. (1) can be viewed as
reflecting the tendency to drive closer while the repul-
sive two-body term in Eq. (1) indicates the tendency to
maintain a safe distance. The basic instinct of a driver
is to maintain a small but safe gap between his vehicle
and the leading vehicle, especially when queuing. The
superposition of these two potentials, which creates an
overall repulsion for small spacings and an attraction
for large ones, expresses the observations that very
small or very large spacings between queuing vehicles
are unlikely. However, no driver can always keep an
ideal headway due to disturbances (unexpected accel-
eration/deceleration of the leading vehicle, occasional
wanderings of the mind, etc.). Thus, the vehicles
(particles) are also simultaneously perturbed by
environment.
This analogue shows that the spacing distribution of
parked vehicles is in agreement with the GUE distribu-
tion
[8]
, when the empirical spacing distribution of
queuing vehicles systems is assumed to fit one of the
Wigner surmises in Eqs. (3)-(6).

Tsinghua Science and Technology, April 2009, 14(2): 252-254 254
2 Comparison with Empirical
Results
To test this conjecture, 700 sample spacings of queuing
vehicles were collected at several different signalized
junctions in Beijing, China. Details of the data collec-
tion were given earlier
[10]
.
The average observed spacing was 1.43 m. Figure 2
shows the probability distribution function, P(s), in the
form of a normalized histogram where s is defined as
the ratio of the spacing to the mean value.

Fig. 2 Normalized spacing distribution of queuing
vehicles at signalized junctions compared with Poisson,
GOE, GUE, and GSE
In the Coulomb gas model, the inverse temperature
| of the gas characterizes the degree of repulsion.
Figure 2 shows
Poisson
( ) P s ,
GOE
( ) P s ,
GUE
( ) P s , and
GSE
( ) P s as well as the empirical spacing distribution
histogram. Unlike the parked vehicle data, the vehi-
cle-queuing data more closely fits the GSE model
(passes the Kolomogorov-Smirnov test with a default
level of 0.05) instead of the GUE model, even though
in these two models, the drivers all aim to drive close
but not too close. This suggests that the vehicle queu-
ing process at signalized junctions also experiences
RMT-like fluctuations.
The spacing distributions of parked vehicles and
queuing vehicles most likely differ due to differences
in the driving patterns for these two scenarios. When
parking, drivers would like to try several times and
move back-and-forth to adjust the gaps so as to park in
an ideal position; while in vehicle-queuing scenarios,
drivers cannot back up to adjust the spacing. Thus,
when parking, the repelling force from neighboring
vehicles is relatively loose; while in queues, the re-
pelling force from neighboring vehicles is rather
rigid. Talbot et al.
[5]
pointed out that such a differ-
ence can be modeled by different inverse temperatures
| . At low temperatures ( | is larger), the charges
tend to be regularly spaced in a crystalline lattice ar-
rangement and the randomness of the positions of the
charges is small. At higher temperatures ( | is
smaller), the charges fluctuations become more intense.
Thus, for parking scenarios, the GUE model with
2 | = fits best with the empirical data while for vehi-
cle queuing, the GSE model with 4 | = fits best with
the empirical data.
In different cities, the spacing within vehicle queues
may still fit GSE distribution but with different means.
Further measurements will test this hypothesis by ve-
hicles queuing data collected in other cities.
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