Study of the Possibilities to Improve the Service Level of Traffic Light Intersections by Road Traffic Micro-simulation

In the last few years, one of the traffic issues that has been constantly increasing in Pitesti is the traffic congestion that occurs at peak hours in the Maior Sontu - Targul de Vale area and at the Targul din Vale roundabout, situated in the proximity. Research to solve this problem was developed with the help of the micro-simulation software for road traffic PTV Vissim. The results obtained revealed that by the micro-simulation of road traffic at traffic light intersections it is possible to demonstrate the limits of improvement of the level of service by redesigning the traffic light plan and the need to look for other ways to solve the traffic problems. Thus, the traffic analysis by micro-simulation has demonstrated in the present case that the most effective way to solve the problem is to increase the capacity of the traffic light intersection by creating additional lanes either to increase the capacity of a groups of lanes or to eliminate overlapping the traffic flows adjacent with those that enter the traffic area of the intersection. The putting into operation by the City Hall of Pitesti Municipality of the proposals advanced based on these studies confirmed the disappearance of road congestion in the area under analysis, thus confirming the usefulness of the analysis by micro-simulation of the road traffic for solving the problems at traffic light intersections.