Simulation model in Python
The “Future Cities” Project in Trinity College Dublin investigates a “Self-Organising Motorway” as a possible approach to reduce congestion on motorways. Your task is to replicate aspects of this research using a simulation model implemented in SimPy v.4 with Python. Create a simulation for a 3km segment of motorway that reduces after 2km from 3 lanes to 2 lanes. Code will be running in Jupyter notebook.
Replicate study: https://www.tcd.ie/futurecities/research/mobility/traffic-management.php
Answer the following questions:
- What is the as optimal average travelling time topt in free flowing, non-congested traffic?
- What is the optimum throughput Nopt in cars/hours when the average travelling time is 20% longer than topt. (The Trinity Study seems to indicate a value of Nopt=4,000 cars/hours)
- What is the maximum throughput Ncong in cars/hours when the motorway is heavily congested, but the traffic is still flowing? We define traffic as congested, when the average travelling time tcong is twice the optimal average travelling time topt. (The Trinity study seems to indicate a value of Ncong=5,000 cars/hours.
Note: The travelling time topt and tcong as well as the throughput figures Nopt and Ncong depend of course on your assumptions about the traffic mix, i.e. the distribution of vehicle types and drivers behaviour that you have considered as given. Make sure that you clearly document your assumptions.