Word.ws English Dictionary

phantom jam

phantom jam noun: a slowdown in traffic that occurs without an apparent reason.

Noun

phantom jam (plural phantom jams)

  1. A slowdown in traffic that occurs without an apparent reason.
    • Eventually, the phantom jam always dissolves. Sometimes the phantom jams are large and sometimes they are small.1996, Achim Bachem, Dietrich E Wolf, Michael Schreckenberg (editors), Traffic And Granular Flow, page 76
    • The leftover phantom jam might be miles away from its orgin.2001 August 25, Sherman Cahal, “ARTICLE: Traffic: Stuck in the Maddening Crowd”, in misc.transport.road (Usenet)
  2. A traffic jam that appears at a distance on a highway, but in reality is an optical illusion.

Examples of phantom jam in a sentence

  • One of the most affected problems is the behavior of freeway traffic, which includes the appearance of "the phantom jam."2003, Elsevier Limited (publisher), Control in Transportation Systems ... a Proceedings Volume from the IFAC Symposium, page 335:
  • Finally, when interpreting accidents as events “out of thin air”, there are, in fact, phantom jams.2012, Martin Treiber, Arne Kesting, Traffic Flow Dynamics, Data, Models and Simulation, page 569:

Forms of phantom jam

pluralphantom jams

Questions about phantom jam

What does phantom jam mean?
Phantom jam means a slowdown in traffic that occurs without an apparent reason.
How do you use phantom jam in a sentence?
One of the most affected problems is the behavior of freeway traffic, which includes the appearance of "the phantom jam."
What part of speech is phantom jam?
Phantom jam is a noun.
What is the plural of phantom jam?
The plural of phantom jam is phantom jams.

Words near phantom jam in the dictionary

  1. phantom eye syndrome
  2. phantom goal
  3. phantom goals
  4. phantom island
  5. phantom islands
  6. phantom jam
  7. phantom jams
  8. phantom limb
  9. phantom limbs
  10. phantom midge
  11. phantom midges

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: phantom jam (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “phantom jam.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/phantom_jam. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.