Contribution to the weaving area management using microscopic simulation model

Abstract EN

Weaving sections have been proved to be the bottleneck of motorway because of high lane changes in this section rather than other sections in the motorway.

In this study, a simulation model has been developed to cover the shortcomings inherit in the existing simulation package such as Paramics, VISSIM and AIMSUN.

The model has been developed using Visual Compact Fortran as bed set because of its efficiency in representing different scenarios and high quality of animation representation.

On other hand, Field data has been collected throughout the Greater Manchester City to be used in the calibration and validation of the developed model.

Then, a new management has been suggested by this study to change the type of weaving section from Type A (ramp weave) to Type B.

This management has been done by using the pavement marking only.

A case study has been taken from Northenden section which suffers from high congestion and long queuing.

By applying this management using simulation model, the encouraging results show vanishing the congestion and disappearing the queuing completely.

The merit of this study is that most weaving sections in the UK have the geometric design which enables to make this management applicable.

Finally, this management could be more economical than using traffic signal and adding new lane because the capacity of new section will be higher than original section as indicated in the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM).