Abstract
Superblocks are city blocks whose size is significantly larger than average. Despite their widespread use across countries such as China, few studies have investigated how these superblocks affect network traffic performance. This paper aims to narrow that gap in knowledge. To that end, we use a grid network emulating a dense city environment. Then, multiple scenarios corresponding to size, location, shape, and number of superblocks are designed by removing nodes and related links. We evaluate network traffic performance by considering the factors of travel distance, travel time, volume-to-capacity ratios on nodes and links, as well as the level of traffic heterogeneity. The results indicate that superblocks with relatively small size (i.e. less than 1/4 of the network size) do not affect traffic significantly. The importance and connectivity of nodes and links related to superblocks are crucial factors affecting the overall traffic performance. In general, the more central the superblock, the larger its influence on the network traffic, except for extremely large superblocks that can significantly affect traffic when located in the periphery, as they lead to high traffic heterogeneities. Rectangular superblocks are more detrimental than square ones. Furthermore, traffic performance can be significantly improved by dividing the superblock into several relatively smaller blocks. Our results should be of direct interest to city-planning decision-makers in dense urban centers.
Highlights
Urban road networks can be generally divided into two categories, namely, small block size networks and large block size networks [1].The former have more road space and provide a larger number of alternative routes that distribute traffic flow faster
Over the past few decades, the influence of block size on traffic performance has been discussed from the perspectives of both urban planning and traffic planning
The existing research mainly focuses on networks with different but uniform block sizes, and little attention has been paid to situations in which small and large blocks coexist in a network
Summary
Urban road networks can be generally divided into two categories, namely, small block size networks (i.e. dense road networks) and large block size networks (i.e. sparse road networks) [1].The former have more road space and provide a larger number of alternative routes that distribute traffic flow faster. As a car-friendly system, the large block size type of network usually has lower road density and connectivity, but higher link and intersection capacity. These two types of road networks can be combined to different levels. For example, many cities in China, the two networks can overlap, i.e. small blocks are combined with large blocks
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