Abstract: Since the last decade of 20th century, researchers on various fields have recognized the complexity of traffic flow, which attracted many traffic-scientists, mathematicians, physicists and economists into this area. The paper reviews the recent discoveries on and developments of the traffic flow theory, such as synchronized flow, traffic transition and three phase traffic theory, and analyzes the main difference between the researchers hereby. And also, the viewpoints of two German scholars, Dirk Helbing and Boris S Kerner, whose researches dominate the related field, as well as their divergence of opinions, have been included specially.

Key words: traffic flow, synchronized flow, traffic congestion, bottleneck

摘要： 从20世纪90年代起，原属交通工程学科中的交通流问题因其特有的复杂性得到了各个学科领域的学者的重视，这同时也使得许多交通科学家、数学家、物理学家和经济学家纷纷加入到交通流理论的研究中来.本文介绍了国际上交通流理论的新发现和新进展，如同步流，交通相变和三相交通流理论，并分析对比了各国不同学者理论之间各自的差异.其中最有影响力的就是德国学者Dirk Helbing 和 Boris S Kerner；本文中特别讨论了他们两者各自的观点，及其主要分歧所在.

关键词: 交通流, 同步流, 交通阻塞, 瓶颈