Abstract: Based on the physical mechanism of car-following and the kinematic characteristics of the traffic wave propagation, a kinematic model for the traffic wave was built, which accords with the reality and is applied to many types of traffic flow. Data were obtained by the video capture in the high building and vehicle trajectory extraction method. The model was validated by the survey data, and the velocity of the traffic wave propagation was calculated in start-wave and stop-wave. Compared with the measured data, the relative error between the two wave velocities obtained by the model and observation was about5%. The validity of the model was confirmed. The vehicle speed and the headway have different impacts on the traffic wave velocity through model analysis. The proposed model can provide a theoretical basis for the urban traffic bottleneck control.