Cellular automation model for analyzing capacity of branch road section

Abstract

In order to reduce the traffic pressure of urban arterial road with the rational utilization of the branch road, the vehicle meeting behavior on the branch road without divided lane was described, and the cellular automation (CA) model was put forward by introducing meeting behavior to reflect the relation between safe meeting speed and road width. The numerical simulation results depict several relation curves between road section capacity, speed and road width under different directional distributions of traffic flow, as well as the curves between the major and minor direction saturation flow, speed and road width. These relation characteristics indicate that except the one-way road section capacity and speed remaining unchanged, other road section capacities and speeds under different directional distributions increase with the increase of road width. On narrow road, the two-way traffic capacity and speed are less than those of one-way traffic; on wide road, the two-way traffic capacity doubles that of one-way traffic, but their speeds are almost the same. As the directional distribution moves to an even distribution of 50/50, the major direction saturation flows and speeds as well as the minor direction speeds tend to decease, while the minor direction saturation flow tends to increase.