UTNSim: A NEW TRAFFIC SIMULATOR BASED ON THE LWR-IM MESOSCOPIC TRAFFIC MODEL

Abstract

Transportation and traffic simulation tools are used to describe traffic networks and simulate performances of traffic systems. The advent of traffic models in the past a few decades has become the “backbone” for these traffic simulation tools. This paper aims to presents a new traffic simulator UTNSim (Urban Traffic Network Simulator) which is based on a mesoscopic model called LWR-IM (Lighthill-Witham-Richards - Integrated Model). However, the structure and implementation algorithm of the UTNSim are explained in this paper. Therefore, as a preliminary evaluation of this traffic simulator tool; a real traffic situation in the city of Shah Alam, Malaysia is specified using the UTNSim. Queues simulated are compared with real queues by mean of the twosampled t-test and mean absolute error. The obtained results reveal a valid traffic simulator tool that could simulate traffic performances that closely resemble the real traffic situation. This is proven as the results from the t-test reveal that there was no signficance difference between simulated and real data.

Keywords

• Mesoscopic model
• Traffic simulator
• UTNSim
• LWR-IM traffic model