Development and Performance Evaluation of an ITS-Ready Microscopic Traffic Model for Irvine, California

Abstract

The research in this paper presents the detailed development and on-line evaluation of a microscopic traffic flow model for the city of Irvine in Southern California. This effort is the first stage of evaluating micro-simulators in terms of their ability to model and analyze Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) under faster-than-real-time conditions. We utilize "Paramics," a particularly promising ITS-capable advanced traffic flow simulator and visualization tool, as one of an array of newly emerging ITS-capable simulation tools and we apply it to the Irvine network as part of a staged effort to model the much larger Southern California network. The driver and vehicle models and parameters were developed to reflect U.K. driver and vehicle characteristics. In this effort we explain our procedure used the calibrate these parameters to reproduce local U.S. traffic behavior. We built a model of a conventional U.S. freeway/arterial network in Southern California and calibrated its parameters using on-line field data. The calibrated models are validated, both at the section and network levels, and evaluated relative to their potential application in Advanced Traffic Management and Information Systems (ATMIS). Based on obtained results, the calibrated model performed well during validation on a freeway link. On the full network, the vehicle release mechanism showed some time-lag in releasing demand onto the network. This is potentially due to stacking of vehicles in memory before adequate headways are found on the road to release the vehicles. Although the problem itself is simple, its effects on the results were notable.