  A microscopic criterion for distinguishing synchronized flow and wide moving
jam phases in single vehicle data measured at a single freeway location is
presented. Empirical local congested traffic states in single vehicle data
measured on different days are classified into synchronized flow states and
states consisting of synchronized flow and wide moving jam(s). Then empirical
microscopic characteristics for these different local congested traffic states
are studied. Using these characteristics and empirical spatiotemporal
macroscopic traffic phenomena, an empirical test of a microscopic three-phase
traffic flow theory is performed. Simulations show that the microscopic
criterion and macroscopic spatiotemporal objective criteria lead to the same
identification of the synchronized flow and wide moving jam phases in congested
traffic. It is found that microscopic three-phase traffic models can explain
both microscopic and macroscopic empirical congested pattern features. It is
obtained that microscopic distributions for vehicle speed difference as well as
fundamental diagrams and speed correlation functions can depend on the spatial
co-ordinate considerably. It turns out that microscopic optimal velocity (OV)
functions and time headway distributions are not necessarily qualitatively
different, even if local congested traffic states are qualitatively different.
The reason for this is that important spatiotemporal features of congested
traffic patterns are it lost in these as well as in many other macroscopic and
microscopic traffic characteristics, which are widely used as the empirical
basis for a test of traffic flow models, specifically, cellular automata
traffic flow models.
