Modeling Critical Gap of Al Turkmani Roundabout in Baghdad City

Abstract

Interest in how roundabouts can most effectively be used continues to increase to achieve goals of safety, efficiency, along with other benefits. This research presents the most important element of the operational performance of roundabout traffic intersections in Baghdad city on capacity analysis. The obtained results for critical headway time are (3.35 sec) and (2.8 sec) for the Main west and East approaches. Also, the critical gap value for the West and East approach is less than the range of (NCHRP 572), possibly attributed to the congested traffic volume in Al Turkman roundabout with aggressive driver behavior. Calculating in the west and East approaches peak period (1:00-2:00) pm to describe the rejected and accepted gaps with ranges from (1.00 – 5.00) sec, the main aim of this research is to model the critical headway by analyzing the data in trial and error technique to determine the shape of the data through Probability density function and Cumulative Density Function, and the Mathematical function that represented, exponential distribution functions for critical gaps with different shape functions scale (1,1.5) for accepted and rejected gaps are better fittings to the empirical distribution, and there is no significant difference. Comparing the observed field data and the theoretical data for the validation process of Rejected and Accepted Gaps are done. A good fit is obtained, and a scatterplot for observed and theoretical data has been drawn for the West and East approaches at peak period (1:00-2:00) pm.

Keywords

• roundabout
• critical time headway
• probability density function
• accepted gaps
• statistical distribution