MODIFICATION OF THE M. J. BECKMAN'S VEHICLE DELAY MODEL FOR INTERCONNECTED INTERSECTIONS IN A MEGALOPOLIS

Abstract

The problem of increasing traffic intensity in megacities is becoming more and more urgent
every year, which leads to increased delays at intersections, increased fuel consumption and unjustified
wear of vehicle units. One of the possible solutions to this problem is the improvement of
traffic control methods. The development of new control systems presupposes the availability of
sufficiently accurate mathematical models for describing the traffic flow in order to evaluate control
quality, as well as to forecast the properties and parameters of traffic flow. Research objective
is to study existing traffic description models, to identify their shortcomings; to improve these
models in describing traffic flow not only at individual intersections, but also within a cluster of
several intersections. The paper analyzes the model of vehicle delays at the intersection by
M.J. Beckmann. It is established that this model is quite accurate in describing isolated intersections
with a uniform intensity of traffic flow, but it is unsuitable in cases with intersections that
have a traffic flow relationship with interconnected traffic light objects and bursts of traffic intensity
during the traffic light control cycle. The reasons for the discrepancy between the experimental
data and the data obtained using the M. J. Beckmann delay model are analyzed. A modification of the M. J. Beckmann delay model is proposed, which takes into account the factor of the
shift of the resolving phase of regulation between interconnected intersections. The resulting addition
of the M. J. Beckmann delay model has significantly improved the accuracy of calculating the
delay of vehicles in relation to interconnected intersections