A Comparative Analysis of Weaving Areas in HCM, TRANSIMS, CORSIM, VISSIM and INTEGRATION

Traffic simulation is a powerful tool that provides transportation engineers with the ability to test the feasibility and performance of a system before it is implemented and also helps in optimizing the proposed system. Over the past twenty years significant amount of work has been conducted on improving the quality and accuracy of transportation simulation models. Much of this work has been concentrated on microscopic simulation models because they provide traffic engineers greater opportunity to examine the inherently complex, stochastic, and dynamic nature of transportation systems when compared to traditional macroscopic models. In order to test the performance of some of the simulation models, a study is conducted on freeway weaving sections, which are considered to be one of the most complex regions to be modeled and analyzed. The intent of the research is to evaluate TRANSIMS, CORSIM, VISSIM and INTEGRATION and compare them with Highway Capacity Manual, which adopts a traditional methodology for carrying out the operational analysis of a highway system. The statistics collected for the simulation runs include weaving speeds, non-weaving speeds and density of the weaving section.