Characteristics of Vehicular Traffic Flow at a Roundabout

TL;DR

This paper presents a stochastic cellular automata model for vehicular traffic at a roundabout, analyzing self-organized control without traffic lights and comparing it with traditional signal schemes to determine optimal traffic volumes.

Contribution

It introduces a novel self-organized, yield-based control model for roundabout traffic using probabilistic cellular automata, and compares its efficiency with traffic light schemes.

Findings

The model effectively simulates vehicle delays at roundabouts.

Optimal control is achieved at specific traffic volumes.

Self-organized control can outperform traditional traffic lights under certain conditions.

Abstract

We construct a stochastic cellular automata model for the description of vehicular traffic at a roundabout designed at the intersection of two perpendicular streets. The vehicular traffic is controlled by a self-organized scheme in which traffic lights are absent. This controlling method incorporates a yield-at-entry strategy for the approaching vehicles to the circulating traffic flow in the roundabout. Vehicular dynamics is simulated within the framework of the probabilistic cellular automata and the delay experienced by the traffic at each individual street is evaluated for specified time intervals. We discuss the impact of the geometrical properties of the roundabout on the total delay. We compare our results with traffic-light signalisation schemes, and obtain the critical traffic volume over which the intersection is optimally controlled through traffic light signalisation schemes.