ESTIMATION OF SATURATION FLOW OF HETEROGENEOUS TRAFFIC USING COMPUTER SIMULATION

The road traffic in developing countries like India are highly heterogeneous with vehicles of wide ranging static and dynamic characteristics. The heterogeneous traffic do not follow traffic lanes and hence, the available models of traffic flow, which are based on lane based homogeneous traffic, can not be applied to study the characteristics of heterogeneous traffic flow. Recently, a simulation model named, HETEROSIM has been developed to replicate the field conditions of heterogeneous traffic flow. This paper is concerned with application of the model to estimate the saturation flow rate of heterogeneous traffic with the specific purpose of studying the effect of road width on saturation flow measured in passenger car units (PCU) per unit width of road