Progression of different vehicle types in a signalised urban arterial corridor - Model development and calibration

Abstract

Increasing freight demand has lead to a greater presence of multi-combination-vehicles, such as B-doubles, on Australia’s roads. The impacts of these vehicles on signalised urban arterial corridor performance are of concern to many road users. This paper describes the development and calibration of a microsimulation model to be used to study these impacts. The discrete-time model considers all vehicles to behave autonomously according to their own capabilities and in response to surrounding vehicles and traffic controls. Traffic flow and trajectory data from a major freight route through Brisbane’s suburbs was used to calibrate the model. Different headway distributions were found for different vehicle types, and modelled by a lognormal distribution. A GPS-equipped car followed subject vehicles along the corridor, whilst the status of 20 signalised intersections was recorded by the STREAMS traffic management system. Acceleration profiles were used to calibrate the unimpeded acceleration models for different vehicle types.