Microscopic simulation of lane changing behaviour at freeway weaving sections

1999 ◽  
Vol 26 (6) ◽  
pp. 840-851 ◽  
Author(s):  
A F Al-Kaisy ◽  
J A Stewart ◽  
M Van Aerde

Microscopic traffic simulation models are being increasingly used to evaluate Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) strategies and to complement empirical data in developing new analytical procedures and methodologies. Lane changing rules are an essential element of any microscopic traffic simulation model. While most of these rules are based on theories and hypotheses, to date no attempt has been made to investigate the consistency of lane changing behaviour from microscopic simulation with empirical observations. The research presented in this paper examined this consistency at freeway weaving areas using empirical data. These data were collected in the late 1980s at several major freeway weaving sections in the State of California. The microscopic traffic simulation model INTEGRATION was used to perform simulation experiments in this research. Vehicle distributions, both total and by type of movement, were used as measures to investigate the lane changing activity that took place at these freeway areas. This examination revealed significant agreement between patterns of lane changing behaviour as observed in the field and as reproduced by microscopic simulation. Most quantitative discrepancies were shown to be a function of user-specified input data or due to some inherent limitations in the empirical data.Key words: simulation, lane changing, weaving, freeways.

1998 ◽  
Vol 1644 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yunlong Zhang ◽  
Larry E. Owen ◽  
James E. Clark

The purpose of this paper is to explore various traffic modeling aspects and theories that may overcome some of the limitations in existing microscopic simulation models. A multiregime microscopic traffic simulation approach has been formulated featuring realistic and comprehensive carfollowing and lane-changing logic. A prototype implementation of the multiregime approach was developed in C++ and extensively tested. The multiregime simulation results demonstrate the efficiency and validity of the proposed models for a broad range of traffic scenarios. The test and validation results indicate that the model and program outperformed traditional methods and other existing traffic simulation programs. The validity and efficiency of the model is attributed to the fact that the regimes were added to the model incrementally to reflect increasing agreement with real-world traffic flow. The techniques and corresponding models will be used to improve existing microscopic traffic simulation models and programs.


Author(s):  
Byungkyu (Brian) Park ◽  
Hongtu (Maggie) Qi

Microscopic traffic simulation models have been playing an important role in the evaluation of transportation engineering and planning practices for the past few decades, particularly in cases in which field implementation is difficult or expensive to conduct. To achieve high fidelity and credibility for a traffic simulation model, model calibration and validation are of utmost importance. Most calibration efforts reported in the literature have focused on the informal practice, and they have seldom proposed a systematic procedure or guideline for the calibration and validation of simulation models. This paper proposes a procedure for microscopic simulation model calibration. The validity of the proposed procedure was demonstrated by use of a case study of an actuated signalized intersection by using a widely used microscopic traffic simulation model, Verkehr in Staedten Simulation (VISSIM). The simulation results were compared with multiple days of field data to determine the performance of the calibrated model. It was found that the calibrated parameters obtained by the proposed procedure generated performance measures that were representative of the field conditions, while the simulation results obtained with the default and best-guess parameters were significantly different from the field data.


1998 ◽  
Vol 1644 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natacha Thomas ◽  
Bader Hafeez

Intelligent transportation systems have created new traffic monitoring approaches and fueled new interests in automated incident detection systems. One new monitoring approach utilizes actual travel times experienced by vehicles, called probes, equipped to transmit this information in real time to a control center. The database needed to design and calibrate arterial incident detection systems based on probe travel times is nonexistent. A microscopic traffic simulation package, Integrated Traffic Simulation, was selected and enhanced to generate vehicle travel times for the incident and incident-free conditions on an arterial. We evaluated the enhanced model. Significant variations in probe travel times were observed in the event of incidents. Average travel time, contrary to average occupancy, may increase, decrease, or remain constant on arterial streets downstream of an incident.


2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 38-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Junia Valente ◽  
Frederico Araujo ◽  
Rym Z. Wenkstern

The advances in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) call for a new generation of traffic simulation models that support connectivity and collaboration among simulated vehicles and traffic infrastructure. In this paper we introduce MATISSE, a complex, large scale agent-based framework for the modeling and simulation of ITS and discuss how Alloy, a modeling language based on set theory and first order logic, was used to specify, verify, and analyze MATISSE’s traffic models.


Author(s):  
Wilco Burghout ◽  
Haris N. Koutsopoulos ◽  
Ingmar Andréasson

Traffic simulation is an important tool for modeling the operations of dynamic traffic systems. Although microscopic simulation models provide a detailed representation of the traffic process, macroscopic and mesoscopic models capture the traffic dynamics of large networks in less detail but without the problems of application and calibration of microscopic models. This paper presents a hybrid mesoscopic–microscopic model that applies microscopic simulation to areas of specific interest while simulating a large surrounding network in less detail with a mesoscopic model. The requirements that are important for a hybrid model to be consistent across the models at different levels of detail are identified. These requirements vary from the network and route choice consistency to the consistency of the traffic dynamics at the boundaries of the microscopic and mesoscopic submodels. An integration framework that satisfies these requirements is proposed. A prototype hybrid model is used to demonstrate the application of the integration framework and the solution of the various integration issues. The hybrid model integrates MITSIMLab, a microscopic traffic simulation model, and Mezzo, a newly developed mesoscopic model. The hybrid model is applied in two case studies. The results are promising and support both the proposed architecture and the importance of integrating microscopic and mesoscopic models.


1970 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 203-208
Author(s):  
Yulong Pei ◽  
Yonggang Wang ◽  
Yin Zhang

With the development of microscopic traffic simulation models, they have increasingly become an important tool for transport system analysis and management, which assist the traffic engineer to investigate and evaluate the performance of transport network systems. Lane-changing model is a vital component in any traffic simulation model, which could improve road capacity and reduce vehicles delay so as to reduce the likelihood of congestion occurrence. Therefore, this paper addresses the virtual desire trajectory, a vital part to investigate the behaviour divided into four phases. Based on the boundary conditions, β-spline curves and the corresponding reverse algorithm are introduced firstly. Thus, the relation between the velocity and length of lane-changing is constructed, restricted by the curvature, steering velocity and driving behaviour. Then the virtual desire trajectory curves are presented by Matlab and the error analysis results prove that this proposed description model has higher precision in automobile lane-changing process reconstruction, compared with the surveyed result. KEY WORDS: traffic simulation, lane-changing model, virtual desire trajectory, β-spline curves, driving behaviour


2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xingan (David) Kan ◽  
Lin Xiao ◽  
Hao Liu ◽  
Meng Wang ◽  
Wouter J. Schakel ◽  
...  

Realistic microscopic traffic simulation is essential for prospective evaluation of the potential impacts of new traffic control strategies. Freeway corridors with interacting bottlenecks and dedicated lanes generate complex traffic flow phenomena and congestion patterns, which are difficult to reproduce with existing microscopic simulation models. This paper discusses two alternative driving behavior models that are capable of modeling freeways with multiple bottlenecks and dedicated lanes over an extended period with varying demand levels. The models have been calibrated using archived data from a complicated 13-mile long section of the northbound SR99 freeway near Sacramento, California, for an 8-hour time period in which the traffic fluctuated from free-flow to congested conditions. The corridor includes multiple bottlenecks, multiple entry and exit ramps, and an HOV lane. Calibration results show extremely good agreement between field data and model predictions. The models have been cross-validated and produced similar macroscopic traffic performance. The main behavior that should be captured for successful modeling of such a complex corridor includes the anticipative and cooperative driver behavior near merges, lane preference in presence of dedicated lanes, and variations in desired headway along the corridor.


Author(s):  
Sunbola Zatmeh-Kanj ◽  
Tomer Toledo

Microscopic simulation models have been widely used as tools to investigate the operation of traffic systems and different intelligent transportation systems applications. The fidelity of microscopic simulation tools depends on the driving behavior models that they implement. However, current models commonly do not consider human-related factors, such as distraction. The potential for distraction while driving has increased rapidly with the availability of smartphones and other connected and infotainment devices. Thus, an understanding of the impact of distraction on driving behavior is essential to improve the realism of microscopic traffic tools and support safety and other applications that are sensitive to it. This study focuses on car-following behavior in the context of distracting activities. The parameters of the well-known GM and intelligent driver models are estimated under various distraction scenarios using data collected with an experiment conducted in a driving simulator. The estimation results show that drivers are less sensitive to their leaders while talking on the phone and especially while texting. The estimated models are implemented in a microscopic traffic simulation model. The average speed, coefficient of variation of speed, acceleration noise and acceleration and deceleration time fractions were used as measures of performance indicating traffic flow and safety implications. The simulation results show deterioration of traffic flow with texting and to some extent talking on the phone: average speeds are lower and the coefficient of variation of speeds are higher. Further experimentation with varying fractions of texting drivers showed similar trends.


Author(s):  
Xuan Fang ◽  
Tamás Tettamanti

It is believed that autonomous vehicles will replace conventional human drive vehicles in the next decades due to the emerging autonomous driving technology, which will definitely bring a massive transformation in the road transport sector. Due to the high complexity of traffic systems, efficient traffic simulation models for the assessment of this disruptive change are critical. The objective of this paper is to justify that the common practice of microscopic traffic simulation needs thorough revision and modification when it is applied with the presence of autonomous vehicles in order to get realistic results. Two high-fidelity traffic simulators (SUMO and VISSIM) were applied to show the sensitivity of microscopic simulation to automated vehicle’s behavior. Two traffic evaluation indicators (average travel time and average speed) were selected to quantitatively evaluate the macro-traffic performance of changes in driving behavior parameters (gap acceptance) caused by emerging autonomous driving technologies under different traffic demand conditions.


Author(s):  
Zong Z. Tian ◽  
Thomas Urbanik ◽  
Roelof Engelbrecht ◽  
Kevin Balke

One of the issues involved in using microscopic simulation models is the variation in the simulation results. This study examined some of the more popular microscopic traffic simulation models, CORSIM, SimTraffic, and VISSIM, and investigated the variations in the performance measures generated by these models. The study focused on the capacity and delay estimates at a signalized intersection. The effects of link length, speed, and vehicle headway generation distribution were also investigated. With regard to variations in performance measures, the study found that CORSIM yields the lowest variations, whereas SimTraffic yields the highest. The highest variation in each simulation model normally occurs when the traffic demand approaches capacity. It was also found that delays are affected by the link length and speed in simulation models. Such an impact on delays is closely related to the range of speed variations. In general, shorter links and higher link speeds result in lower delays. There is no strong evidence that the headway distribution used to generate vehicles in the simulated network has any effect on capacity and delay estimates. Multiple simulation runs are necessary to achieve an accurate estimate on the true system performance measures. With a 10% error range in estimated delay, two to five runs may be enough for under-capacity conditions, but more than 40 multiple runs may be necessary to accurately estimate delay at, near, or over capacity.


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