On fluido-dynamic models for urban traffic

The aim of this paper is to address the following questions: which models, among fluido-dynamic ones, are more appropriate to describe urban traffic? While a rich debate was developed for the complicate dynamics of highway traffic, some basic problems of urban traffic are not always appropriately discussed. We analyze many recent, and less recent, models focusing on three basic properties. The latter are necessary to reproduce correctly queue formation at lights and junctions, and their backward propagation on an urban network. 2000 Mathematics Subject Classification: 35L65