Evaluation of Traffic Performance of Vehicles Lane Changing before the Right Turn and after the Right turn at the Signalized Intersections

Traffic operations in the congestion parts of road networks are very complicated and a comprehensive analysis of interactions between vehicles is essential for understanding the bottleneck event and providing solutions for addressing the issues. This involves the development of traffic theories to explain driver behavior on the microscopic state, that one of its main elements is lane changing behavior. In this research, the effects of vehicles lane changing before the right turn for exiting from the intersection and after the right turn for merging into the next urban corridors, in different percentages of the right turn traffic volume in the three well-known intersections namely "Felezi-Mellat", Simin, and Sadoogh " intersections in Isfahan city, one of the most congested city in central part of Iran, using Aimsun software were studied and evaluated. The data collection method was done using videotaping technic and peak hour of the intersections was recorded. Then the geometric and traffic characteristics of the intersections were extracted using field observations data extraction from the recorded films. For the aim of the research, two main parameters of the Aimsun lane-changing model, including distance zone 1 and distance zone 2, were estimated with proposed values. In the end, using Synchro software, signalized intersections timing were optimized under different scenarios. Having used the proposed timing schemes, the intersections were modeled in Aimsun software in order to evaluate the traffic measure of effectiveness under defined scenarios. The results showed that using the proposed values  instead of the default values of Aimsun lane-changing model changed the value of travel time in the aforementioned intersections of the Felezi-Mellat, Simin and Sadoogh by (1) to (-9), (0) to (-15), and (0) to (-5) percent, respectively.