Considerações sobre a calibração do modelo de car-following do vissim para vias arteriais urbanas

Abstract

The traffic microsimulation software VISSIM has been widely used over the past two decades. The software provides the user with two models of car-following, W74 and W99, both based on Wiedemann’s psychophysical model. This paper aims to make a discussion of relevant points about the calibration of the VISSIM car- following algorithm for modelling traffic operations on urban arterials. Initially, a conceptual discussion that compares the model originally proposed by Wiedemann with its versions incorporated in microssimulator is presented. Then the paper shows a sensitivity analysis, which indicates that the W74 algorithm is the most appropriate for modeling travel times and delays for urban roads. Important conceptual aspects of the calibration methodology such as choice of the parameters and the performance measures are discussed. The calibrated model resulted in errors of average travel time estimation of up to 7%.