Mixed Flow Simulation at Urban Intersections: Computational Comparisons between Conflict-Point Detection and Cellular Automata Models

This paper presents a continuous simulation-based model for mixed traffic flow between motor and non-motor vehicles at intersections in major cities in China. Not like in developed countries, conflict points and rule-less of mixed flow in intersection, which greatly impaired the traffic capacity, is the major traffic issues at the intersections in China, Therefore, we introduce a conflict-point detection (CD) model using conflict points´ information between motor (e.g. cars, buses, and motorcycles) and non-motor vehicles (e.g. bicycles and pedestrians) based on continuous simulation methodologies to improve this situation. The differences of space and time complexities between CD and cellular automata (CA) models are employed through simulation examples. Results show that the CD model is pretty fitting for the practical traffic analysis to deal with traffic safety issues and help to diminish the chaos at the intersections greatly.