Influence of heterogeneity of driving behavior under exceptional event on network performance by simulations

The driving behaviour of travellers has been found very different in case of emergency conditions compared to that at the normal traffic conditions. In this paper, we show how these different driving behaviors at the emergency condition, as well as the heterogeneity among drivers´ behaviors, influence the network performance. We performed a sensitivity analysis on the model parameters representing the different (heterogeneous) driving behaviors and investigated the impact of these variations on the network performance. The analysis is conducted by applying a simulation framework using S-Paramics. The results show that reductions in the mean time headway and in the minimum gap dramatically increase the travel production (throughputs). Also, it is found that variations in driving behaviour play a much smaller role in the network performance.