Analysis of travel time reliability of an urban corridor using micro simulation techniques

The ever-increasing traffic congestion on urban roads leads to uncertainties in travel time necessitating the need to consider travel time reliability in measuring the efficiency of the transport system. In view of this, an attempt has been made in this study to examine the travel time reliability under the influence of various demand and supply side factors of the transportation system. For this purpose, an urban corridor of 2.5 km on National Highway 2 in the city of Delhi was considered. The traffic volume, speed and travel time data for one week were collected to analyse the travel time reliability on this stretch and estimated appropriate reliability measures. In order to assess the impact of various demand and supply side variations on travel time reliability, a microscopic traffic simulation model was developed using VISSIM software. The developed simulation model was successfully validated with the observed data and it was found from the analysis that travel time increases 5.3 and 6 times for the scenarios of increase in demand by 50% and lane closed for about 30 min respectively.