Simulation of Route Direction Reconfiguration for Traffic Management in Medium-Sized Cities (Case Study: Central District of Yazd)

One way to change the allocation of road resources to traffic demand is to convert two-way roads into one-way streets. This conversion can be done for a variety of reasons such as insufficient street width for two-way traffic, reducing delay at intersections, increasing safety and reducing congestion. In the city of Yazd, the urban road network has very few one-way thoroughfares and its traffic flow directions have not been optimally configured to solve the traffic problems of this city. Converting two-way streets into one-way routes may therefore serve as a means of better traffic management in the central district of this city. In this research, after a review of the literature, the physical and traffic characteristics of main roads in the central district of Yazd were investigated through a field study in order to identify the two-way roads that are technically and practically eligible for conversion into one-way. The results of the field study, which were obtained from 78 data collection stations, were then used to build a simulation model in the Aimsun software. The network was then calibrated and prepared for the execution of the scenarios. The results indicated that as long as the number of trips ending in or passing through the area remains the same, these streets cannot be made one-way and All scenarios have worse results than the current situation.Finally, the proposed scenarios were re-simulated with the assumption of a 30% decrease in travel demand in the area.It was found that scenario 6 offers better outcomes than other options and it is practically impossible to make the streets one-way without reducing the demand for private transport.