Selected issues in modelling of traffic flows in congested urban networks

Making rational decisions about the planning and designing the traffic management in the city requires a proper description of traffic flows following through the various elements of the transportation network. This issue is the subject of many studies, resulting in a wide variety of models used in this field. Generally they can be divided into two main groups: models describing the distribution of traffic flows in the transportation network and models describing the transition of traffic flow by individual elements of the transportation network. This article reviews the models used to describe the traffic shaping in such an arrangement. Then the way of describing traffic flows, which may be used in the construction and calibration of dynamic traffic models has been formalized. The article also includes a calculation example with application of the proposed description of the components of traffic flows on the link of urban network.