Exactly solvable statistical model for two-way traffic

Abstract

We generalize a recently introduced traffic model, where the statistical weights are associated with whole trajectories, to the case of two-way flow. An interaction between the two lanes is included which describes a slowing down when two cars meet. This leads to two coupled five-vertex models. It is shown that this problem can be solved by reducing it to two one-lane problems with modified parameters. In contrast to stochastic models, jamming appears only for very strong interaction between the lanes.