Application of Microscopic Traffic Simulation in Road Network Planning: A Case Study in the Central District of Beijing City

Beijing, a world famous historic metropolitan city, is facing serious traffic congestion in its central district due to the ever increasing traffic demands induced by high speed economic development. To improve the local traffic situation, how to plan the road network in this area and protect the cultural relics simultaneously has become a difficult problem that concerns the government decision-makers and urban planners. The purpose of this paper is to present a case study of microscopic traffic simulation in the road network planning of Chaoyangmen-Fuchengmen Street in Beijing city. A high performance microscopic traffic simulation tool, PARAMICS (PARAllel MICroscopic Simulator), is selected to model, visualize, evaluate and compare two types of schemes, i.e. public transportation dedicated lane schemes and one-way traffic schemes. This study indicates that microscopic traffic simulation is able to provide quantitative and effective decision support for the road network planning.