Microsimulation in the Assessment of Vehicle and Pedestrian traffic in an Urban Network

Abstract

Metropolitan cities have attracted and accumulated most of the world's population territorially. Concomitant to this, there are impacts generated by urban traffic, which directly affect social life and relationships, namely, educational, personal, commercial, among others. These impacts, by their very nature, involve multiple actors; multiactivities; complex relationships from and between people; different activities and infrastructures. In addition, the effects of rapid urbanization and the modernization and change of urban lifestyles have fostered new behaviors. Because of this, and the wide spectrum of variables, as well as the need to view and analyze scenarios, in this work we used microsimulation, as it offers possibilities to understand behaviors. Being proposed a model that describes the elements that make up the daily movement of vehicles and pedestrians in urban areas. This model is a modification of the traditional four-step approach, considering the behavior of each decision maker and other actors individually involved. The structure of the model consists of five steps: operational analysis; simulation structuring; data collect; measures of efficiency and acceptability. The research unit used was a metropolitan region with a high flow of pedestrians and vehicles, located in the state of Espírito Santo. The results showed that changes in tracing and use of restriction signals are alternatives that lead to the minimization of queues. The contributions of this work are not limited to scientific development, but also serve to compose the framework for decision making in the sector.