Modelling traffic in detail with mesoscopic models: opening powerful new possibilities for traffic analyses

Abstract

This paper on modeling traffic with mesoscopic models is from the proceedings of 14th international Conference on Urban Transport and the Environment in the 21st Century, which was held in Malta in 2008. The authors describe this new model type and use a new development in the Cube transport planning software package, Cube Avenue, to demonstrate how mesoscopic dynamic traffic assignment models can help model very congested areas to the level of detail required for traffic engineering and area traffic control. With the mesoscopic Cube Avenue program, an extension of the macroscopic planning tool, Cube Voyager, analysts can study problems for which traditional models don’t provide enough data and for which microscopic models provide too much data. One section briefly describes currently ongoing model developments in the U.S., the U.K., Scandinavia, Europe, and Australia, where Cube Avenue is being used to study and optimize area traffic control, to examine blocking effects caused by tolling, and general traffic management and planning issues.