I've always had this odd feeling that traffic is actually a Bernoulli flow, where instead of "pressure" you have congestion. eg if you have two lanes merging a

I've always had this odd feeling that traffic is actually a Bernoulli flow, where instead of "pressure" you have congestion. eg if you have two lanes merging and the system is at capacity, then the "pressure" across the streamline increases and traffic slows down as a result. And when you have very little pressure (or diverging arterial roads) traffic tends to speed up. Of course there is a secondary problem of "phantom" traffic jams where the system is not really slowing down due to traffic merging or anything, you just have spots where traffic is not flowing at all for no real reason (the optimal solution being that everyone puts their foot on the gas and accelerates together). I suppose the physical analogue might be cavitation or non-laminar/turbulent flow? I can't find any academic references on this but it's always made intuitive sense to me.