Evaluation of safety, traffic and economic indicators of traffic calming measures using software simulation (case study: Qom city)

Abstract

The increasing growth of vehicles and the decrease in road safety in developing countries have led to an increase in urban accident statistics. Urban management policymakers have aimed to implement effective solutions to improve the level of safety, reduce economic costs caused by accidents and environmental consequences of fossil fuel consumption. This is possible by implementing traffic calming measures, which change the behavior of drivers according to the environment by limiting the speed of vehicles. This study has tried to evaluate traffic calming measures by presenting 4 proposed scenarios, such as changing the speed reduction facilities, building a signalized intersection, and reducing the road width to calm the traffic flow on one of the high-traffic and accident-prone roads in Qom using Aimsun simulator software. The evaluation of accidents showed that the construction of new signalized intersections has reduced the average speed of vehicles by 35.5%, and the total number of accidents has increased from 474 in 2018 to 217. But this has led to an increase in the delay time and more time has been wasted. Further, the results of the investigation showed that by removing the speed reduction facilities and increasing the width of the road, the travel time was reduced by 19.9 and 9.3 percent, respectively, compared to the existing situation, and by constructing the signalized intersection, the speed of vehicles decreased by 12.9 percent.

Keywords

• traffic calming
• safety
• simulation
• accident prediction
• economic assessment