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Self-Organized Network Flows

A model for traffic flow in street networks or material flows in supply networks is presented, that takes into account the conservation of cars or materials and other significant features of traffic flows such as jam formation, spillovers, and load-dependent transportation times. Furthermore, conflicts or coordination problems of intersecting or merging flows are considered as well. Making assumptions regarding the permeability of the intersection as a function of the conflicting flows and the queue lengths, we find self-organized oscillations in the flows similar to the operation of traffic lights.