Application of Micro Simulation Model for Traffic Management Planning: A Case Study of Overhead Gantry installation on Expressway

Abstract

The most important factor of the traffic accidents is due to driver errors but also, vehicle defects, road and environmental conditions. Especially, the construction activities will make a great change of road and environmental conditions. Therefore, a good traffic management can reduce the environmental factor which causes the traffic accidents. Regarding this issue, Expressway Authority of Thailand (EXAT), a government agency under Ministry of Transport, considerably concerns this issue as the first priority of driver’s road safety. In other word, road construction on expressways must be well-managed by traffic management according to the Expressway standard for traffic control, particularly the installation of overhead gantry on expressway as an example of the construction activities that affects entire lane closure on expressways which brings a negative impact to expressway users. To be well-managed an effective traffic management, EXAT has implemented a micro-traffic simulation model, called AIMSUN in order to evaluate the alternatives and impacts of lane closure. Also, those evaluations are to manage least traffic impact on expressway users. The model has been determined two alternatives as follows; 1) Temporary Lane Closure for 10 mins. and 2) Temporary Lane Closure for 5 mins. By using indicators namely; queue length, delay time and traffic volume. The evaluation of the two alternatives was applied. Comparing between those two approaches, the result shows that alternative 2 has a better outcome. When compare with actual traffic management, the result shows that queue length was close to micro-traffic simulation model. It cause a safe traffic management on installation of overhead gantry and minimess the negative impact on expressway users.