Interdisciplinary Evaluation of Intersection Performances-A Microsimulation-Based MCDA

Abstract

Intersections are the most important regions in terms of urban traffic management. The intersection areas on the corridor should be analyzed together for consistency in traffic engineering. To do so, three intersections on the Vatan Street corridor in Istanbul, the most crowded city of Turkey, were examined. Various geometric and signal designs were performed for intersections and the most suitable corridor design was analyzed. The corridor designs were modeled with the PTV VISSIM microsimulation software. The most suitable corridor design was evaluated by using the results obtained from the microsimulation via analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) from multi criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methods. The evaluation criteria in the study are vehicle delay, queue length, stopped delay, stops, travel time, vehicle safety, CO emission, fuel consumption, and construction cost. As a result, the current and the most suitable alternative corridors were compared according to the comparison parameters and up to 80% improvements were observed. Thus, some advantages were obtained in terms of energy, environment, time, and cost.