Avaliação de desempenho do tráfego urbano usando simulação : estudo de caso em Maceió/AL

Abstract

Brazilian metropolises have been facing serious traffic congestion problems as a consequence of rapid population growth, the increasing vehicles number and inefficient public policies. Most cities do not have a real-time urban traffic control system to optimize the flow of vehicles. In this context, the use of traffic simulation software appears as low-cost alternatives to evaluate various problems and promote possible improvements in vehicle traffic in large cities. Thus, through the Urban Mobility Simulator (SUMO), this paper proposed to evaluate the urban traffic performance of a prominent road in the city of Maceió, Alagoas, Brazil. The chosen road was Fernandes Lima Avenue, as it represents one of the most important road corridors of the city. The proposed traffic simulation approach allowed us to understand the behavior of the flow of vehicles on the road, which has peculiarities, such as the blue lane (exclusive for public transport) and three sections with pedestrian traffic lights. The simulation validation was performed considering data obtained from real observations, and the results indicate that it is capable of providing estimates with errors lower than 5% and 10% for, respectively, the vehicle traffic volume and the total travel time. Finally, comparing the experimental results of the 8 proposed case studies: current (1), no blue lane (2), no pedestrian traffic lights (3), no blue lane and pedestrian traffic lights (4), accident section 1 (5), accident section 2 (6), traffic lights with adjustment of -5 seconds (7) and traffic lights with adjustment of +5 seconds (8), it was possible to obtain improvements in the efficiency indicators (travel time, waiting time, consumption of fuels and carbon dioxide emissions) and volumetric gains in vehicle traffic, with emphasis on scenarios 2, 3, 4 and 8, which achieved gains in vehicle traffic volume of, respectively, 9.95%, 7.88% , 10.77% and 1.21%.