Implementing an Urban Bicycle Highway on Pedestrian Traffic - Finding a Traffic Control Strategy with Optimal Coordination for the City Center of Munich

Abstract

Bicycle highways are specially designed infrastructures allowing cyclists to travel at a considerable speed through different environments. These elements in densely built urban areas are difficult to understand, since many requirements and standards need to be met. Serving all modes of traffic with acceptable efficiency and implementing a bicycle highway design is a challenge and therefore the aim of this study is to define a strategy for bicycle road traffic control in an urban area, the city center of Munich, which will improve its traffic efficiency. The current situation of the studied area was developed in PTV VISSIM to achieve the objective. Firstly, the base model was calibrated and validated to match the present state and synchronized separately for bicycles and cars. Five alternative models were developed based on coordinating and developing the bicycle highway infrastructure. Attempts were made to compare the models on efficiency measurements and the models were evaluated to analyze traffic safety parameters. In this assessment, interaction between pedestrians and bicycles was given priority. The research result shows improvement of the traffic efficiency of bicycle highways within the alternatives proposed. The loop pause time decreased up to 7%, the number of stops decreased by 28%, bicycle travel time has been reduced up to 7%. The results of this research show improvement of the traffic efficiency of bicycle highways within the alternatives proposed.