Performance Evaluation of ITS Strategies Using Microscopic Simulation

This paper presents a micro-simulation method to evaluate the effectiveness of potential ITS strategies under the incident scenarios. The evaluation is conducted over a corridor network located at the City of Irvine, California. The potential ITS strategies include incident management, local adaptive ramp metering, coordinated ramp metering, traveler information systems, and the combination of above. Based on the calibrated simulation model, we implement and evaluate these scenarios in the microscopic simulation model, PARAMICS. The evaluation results show that all ITS strategies have positive effects on the network performance. Because of the network topology (one major freeway with two parallel arterial streets), real-time traveler information system has the greatest benefits among all single ITS components. The combination of several ITS components, such as integrated control, can generate better benefits.