Project Description

During the last three decades, roundabouts have gained increased popular and political acceptance and are now used worldwide. Roundabouts are known by their high performance levels in safety, traffic capacity and in atmospheric emissions, especially when compared with other at-grade intersections. AROUND focuses on the demand for sound analytic and simulation roundabout models. To reach this objective, the work comprises five main parts: 1 - Collection of geometric, traffic and pedestrian data for a set of sites covering a wide range of geometric and operational characteristics; 2 - Comparative assessment and improvement of existing analytic capacity models, either regression or gap-acceptance based; 3 - Calibration of microscopic simulation models, with emphasis on the sub-models directly associated to driver behavior at roundabouts (car-following and gap-acceptance); 4 - Association of a pollutant emission model with the microscopic models. The estimation of the pollutant emissions will be supported by the Vehicle Specific Power (VSP) concept, which correlates the vehicle speed profiles with the respective consumptions and emissions; 5 -Application of the improved capacity and pollutant models to test the efficacy of new solutions, such as the turbo-roundabout, now very popular in Netherlands.

Research Team

• University of Coimbra: Ana Bastos Silva (global coordination), Álvaro Seco , Sílvia Santos
• Polythecnic Institute of Viseu: Luís Vasconcelos (local coordination), Luís Neto
• University of Aveiro: Margarida Cabrita Coelho (local coordination), Paulo Fernandes.

Financial Support

• Total funding: 120.000€. Project co-funded by FEDER (“Programa Operacional Factores de Competitividade” – COMPETE) and by FCT – “Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia”. Reference: PTDC/SEN-TRA/122114/2010

Stage of Progress

• Concluded

Publications

Chapters of Books

• Vasconcelos, L.; Seco, A.; Bastos Silva, A. (2014) "Hybrid Calibration of Microscopic Simulation Models", Sousa, Jorge Freire; Rossi, Riccardo, in Computer-based Modelling and Optimization in Transportation , Springer International Publishing , pp 307-320, ISBN: 978-3-319-04630-3

Scientific Papers

• Bastos Silva, A; Vasconcelos, L; Santos, S. (2014) "Moving from Conventional Roundabouts to Turbo-roundabouts", Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 111 , pp 137-146
• Bastos Silva, Ana; Sílvia Santos; Luís Vasconcelos; Álvaro Seco; João Pedro Silva (2014) "Driver Behavior Characterization in Roundabout Crossings", Transportation Research Procedia 3 , pp 80-89
• Vasconcelos, L.; Bastos Silva, A.; Seco, A. (2014) "Capacity of normal and turbo-roundabouts: comparative analysis", Proceedings of the ICE - Transport 167(TR2) , pp 88-99
• Vasconcelos, L.; Neto, L.; Santos, S.; Bastos Silva, A; Seco, A. (2014) "Calibration of the Gipps car-following model using trajectory data", Transportation Research Procedia 3 , pp 952–961
• Vasconcelos, L; Bastos Silva, A.; Seco, A.; Fernandes, P.; Coelho, M. (2014) "Turboroundabouts: multicriterion assessment on intersection capacity, safety and emissions", Transportation Research Record 2042 , pp 28-37
• Vasconcelos, L; Neto, L.; Seco, A.; Bastos Silva, A. (2014) "Validation of Surrogate Safety Analysis Module Technique for Assessment of Intersection Safety", Transportation Research Record 2014 , pp 1–9
• Vasconcelos, L.; Seco, A.; Bastos Silva, A. (2013) "Comparison of Procedures to Estimate Critical Headways at Roundabouts", Promet-Traffic & Transportation 25(1) , pp 43-53
• Vasconcelos, L.; Bastos Silva, A.; Seco, A.; Silva, J. (2012) "Estimating the parameters of Cowan’s M3 headway distribution for roundabout capacity analyses", The Baltic Journal of Road and Bridge Engineering 7(4) , pp 261–268
• Vasconcelos, L; Silva, A B; Seco, Á; Rouxinol, G (2012) "Estimation of critical headways at unsignalized intersections - a microscopic approach", Advances in Transportation Studies, (Special issue 1) , pp 59-72