Survey of position of shared taxi stops on urban road traffic performance

Jitneys have special behavior and suddenly change lanes for boarding and alighting of passengers. These vehicles cause irregularity in and a lot of delay on traffic flow by unexpected maneuvers and stops in anywhere of streets. Its importance issue that we force taxies to stop only at taxi stops and subsequently assess the effect of this restriction on improvement of traffic parameters.This research is carried out for assessing the effect of taxi stops position on traffic performance of an urban street. The approach was based on simulation of taxi behavior in a sample street by Vissim simulating software. The real data of traffic flow and taxi behavior has been collected from a sample two-lane street in the city of Tehran.Performance parameters like travel time, delay and average speed are determined on the basis of software results for different scenarios. Results are compared and the best scenario is illustrated. Results indicate that taxi stops in one and two lane streets have considerable effects on street traffic performance and increase travel time and delay of vehicles.