Substantiation of the Method of Traffic Flows Distribution in Microsimulation of Toll Collection Plazas

Abstract

Introduction. The practice of charging road tolls to compensate for the costs of the road construction and operation has been known since ancient times. The traditional approach to toll collection on motorways is that vehicles must stop and pay at the appropriate collection point (Toll Collection Plaza — TCP). At the same time, two payment systems are traditionally distinguished: an open one, in which the driver pays for traveling the entire toll section, and a closed one, in which, upon entering the toll motorway, the driver is obliged to take a ticket at the first point (station) of payment and return it upon exiting the motorway at the final payment point, paying for the actual distance traveled. In both systems, there are bound to be vehicle delays in TCP. In this regard, transport engineers and road design specialists face several urgent tasks, such as determining the impact of toll booths on the level of service, capacity and other traffic indicators on motorways, assessing the impact of TCP configuration and toll collection technologies on of the traffic flows indicators in the TCP zone and in the transport network. Problem statement. One of the modern methods of research and assessment of the state of traffic at toll collection points is microsimulation of the road network or individual TCPs. At the same time, the reliability of this analysis tool will be determined not only by the calibration parameters of the simulation model, but also by the quality of the adopted distribution of traffic flows. Purpose. The purpose of the work is to substantiate the method of traffic flows distribution when developing a microsimulation model of toll collection plazas via PTV Vissim software. Materials and methods. Single TCP scenarios are simulated in Vissim, which differ in the number of operation lanes, approaches to network reproduction, and applied traffic distribution methods. The results. The actual scientific and applied problem of justifying the method of traffic flows distribution in the microsimulation of toll collection plazas in PTV Vissim has been solved. An analysis of the possibilities of traffic reproduction methods in TCP using static routes, dynamic assignment, the PTV Vissim COM interface for dynamic assignment, “Managed lanes” routes was performed. In TCP models with the number of lanes from 3 to 6 with static routes and dynamic assignment, the realistic behavior of drivers when choosing a traffic lane in TCP is verified. An analysis of transport delays in TCP models was performed to compare the simulation results when using static routes and dynamic assignment.