The forecasts of road transport indicate an increasing demand. Most traffic in Europe is generated on two-way roads despite ambitious extensions of the motorway network. The two-way traffic is very heterogeneous due to the wide variation in the road standard and in the types of traffic elements and their performances. These inhomogeneities imply most inhomogeneous traffic conditions with relatively high risk levels and drops in the trafficability compared to the motorway traffic. This two-way road traffic simulation model is aimed as a tool in the development of future road geometric policy as well as for improvements of existing road sections taking into account that the road traffic costs constitute about 70% of the total road transport costs. This tool enables a systems view by reflecting traffic behaviour due to the road geometric design parameters, traffic regulations, the traffic load and its composition in the same model system. The aim is to get a set of relevant measures of efficiency and traffic characteristics which are coherent. Road traffic informatics (RTI) on a driver manoevering level will probably improve road capacity and traffic safety. If so, use of RTI will probably become part of the design process. (A) The German title of this article is: Zwei-spuren-modell für die Simulation des Strassenverkehrs.
Abstract