Passage: In 1998, Kerner found out that in real field traffic data the emergence of a wide moving jam in free flow is observed as a cascade of F → S → J phase transitions (Figure 9): first, a region of synchronized flow emerges in a region of free flow. As explained above, such an F → S phase transition occurs mostly at a bottleneck. Within the synchronized flow phase a further "self-compression" occurs and vehicle density increases while vehicle speed decreases. This self-compression is called "pinch effect". In "pinch" regions of synchronized flow, narrow moving jams emerge. If these narrow moving jams grow, wide moving jams will emerge labeled by S → J in Figure 9). Thus, wide moving jams emerge later than traffic breakdown (F → S transition) has occurred and at another road location upstream of the bottleneck. Therefore, when Kerner’s F → S → J phase transitions occurring in real traffic (Figure 9 (a)) are presented in the speed-density plane (Figure 9 (b)) (or speed-flow, or else flow-density planes), one should remember that states of synchronized flow and low speed state within a wide moving jam are measured at different road locations. Kerner notes that the frequency of the emergence of wide moving jams increases if the density in synchronized flow increases. The wide moving jams propagate further upstream, even if they propagate through regions of synchronized flow or bottlenecks. Obviously, any combination of return phase transitions (S → F, J → S, and J → F transitions shown in Figure 9) is also possible.

Question: What happens to the pinch regions during self-compression?
narrow moving jams emerge