Available online at www.CivileJournal.org Civil Engineering Journal (E-ISSN: 2476-3055; ISSN: 2676-6957) Vol. 8, No. 11, November, 2022 2378 Modeling Sustainable Traffic Behavior: Avoiding Congestion at a Stationary Bottleneck Imran Badshah 1* , Zawar H. Khan 2 , T. Aaron Gulliver 3 , Khurram S. Khattak 4 , Syed Saad 5 1 National Institute of Urban Infrastructure Planning, University of Engineering & Technology, Peshawar, 25000, Pakistan. 2 Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar, Pakistan. 3 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Victoria, PO Box 1700, STN CSC, Victoria, BC, Canada. 4 Department of Computer System Engineering, University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar, Pakistan. 5 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, 32610 Seri Iskandar, Malaysia. Received 13 July 2022; Revised 23 September 2022; Accepted 17 October 2022; Published 01 November 2022 Abstract Sustainable traffic behaviour is increasing in importance as traffic volume rises due to population growth. In this paper, a model for traffic flow at a stationary bottleneck is developed to determine the parameters that cause congestion. Towards this goal, traffic density, speed, and delay were acquired during peak and off-peak periods in the morning and afternoon at a stationary bottleneck in Peshawar, KPK, Pakistan. The morning and afternoon peak periods have high densities, low speeds, and considerable delays. Regression models are developed using this data. These results indicate that there is a linear relationship between density and time at the stationary bottleneck and a negative linear relationship between density and speed. Thus, an increase in density increases the time delay and reduces the speed. I comprehensive traffic delay model is characterized by a stationary bottleneck. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) test and P-values were used to identify the best-fit distribution for speed and density. The binomial and generalized extreme values are considered the best fits for density and speed. The results presented can be used to develop accurate simulation models for stationary bottlenecks to reduce congestion. Keywords: Stationary Bottleneck; Target Lane; Traffic Model; Lane Changes; Traffic Congestion; Delay. 1. Introduction Sustainable traffic behavior can reduce travel time and cost. Traffic congestion in Karachi, Pakistan, is estimated to cost fifty thousand dollars daily [1]. This congestion can be mitigated through sustainable system design, such as real- time optimization of traffic signal patterns [2]. Traffic flow is typically analyzed using speed and density [3]. Speed is the distance traveled by a vehicle in a unit of time, and density is the number of vehicles per unit length in a lane [4]. An increase in density results in a reduction in speed, which increases travel time [5]. The difference between the time for free-flowing traffic and the actual time taken is called the travel time delay [6]. Traffic bottlenecks increase this delay [7]. Traffic bottlenecks can be categorized as stationary or moving [8, 9]. At moving bottlenecks, vehicles follow slow vehicles due to the unavailability of space to overtake. As a result, they adopt the velocity of the leading vehicles, which is known as the platoon velocity [9, 10]. At stationary bottlenecks, vehicles are forced to change lanes because of * Corresponding author: imranbadshah07@gmail.com http://dx.doi.org/10.28991/CEJ-2022-08-11-02 © 2022 by the authors. Licensee C.E.J, Tehran, Iran. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).