JUNCTION PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS WITH THE HELP OF AN UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE (VISTRO-AIMSUN-VISSIM)

In traffic engineering practices, there is a requirement for conducting a healthy vehicle count in order to determine concepts such as macroscopicmesoscopic-microscopic-hybrid modelling, signal and junction optimization and design, transportation plan, traffic effect and corridor analyses, and delay. With the purpose of solving the problem that is encountered in traffic counting at peak hours, an image processing software was developed with a new approach, and the video images that were shot by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) were digitally transferred to the Excel environment by being processed by this software. It was achieved to make traffic counting easier from the traffic that separated from the arms on the junction, and by automated transfer of these data into the computer environment, time savings were achieved. The traffic data of the arms of the junctions were transferred to the Excel environment with 2.84% error rate, they were analysed by the VISTRO, VISSIM and AIMSUN software to produce four different scenarios, and junction performances were compared by establishing models. When the scenarios were compared, the worst performance in terms of queue length, v/c, levels-of-service and delays was obtained in Scenario 3. When the geometries of junctions were taken as without an island, signalled, two-way two-phase controlled, performance dropped. The VISSIM software provided more realistic results in comparison to the other two.