Leveraging Traffic Microsimulation for Smarter Network Design

February 10th, 2025

Traffic microsimulation is a powerful tool for evaluating transportation networks and systems. Transportation engineers often rely on mathematical models to forecast network performance with parameters typically set by local code or policy. Microsimulations offer a more specialized approach by modeling each individual vehicle and its interactions with entities in a traffic network such as intersections, traffic signals, pedestrians, and public transportation, which allows for evaluating and designing networks around unique sets of circumstances.

These simulations are extremely useful by providing an intuitive picture of traffic operations that can be shared with public stakeholders and decision makers in a way that traditional traffic analysis methods cannot. Traditional mathematical models do not provide a visual representation and are just numbers on a chart that represent the queues, intersection delay time, and other data. Visual representation allows for better understanding, relatability, and engagement from stakeholders as they can see how those numbers look on a road network and affect traffic.

There is a wide array of applications for traffic microsimulation, including:

• Modeling pick-up and drop-off operations at a school, medical use, hotel, or place of worship
• Evaluating retail/restaurant drive-through facilities
• Measuring the impacts of adding and modifying traffic signals within a network
• Highlighting complex interactions within an urban network with high levels of pedestrian, bicycle, and transit activity

This video showcases a simulation using SimTraffic, a software tool designed for performing microsimulation analysis. For this project, we analyzed the impacts of reversing the direction of a one-way garage entrance located within a medical campus. Our focus was on vehicle queueing along the main roadway and the effects on adjacent intersections. The model was instrumental in illustrating the positives and negatives of modifying the network and enabled stakeholders the visual tool to make an informed decision.

The positive and negatives of modifying a network depend on the project, but in this case, the positives identified were less friction when entering the intersection when the outbound was changed to an inbound; however, the negative identified was that the demand was transferred elsewhere in the network. Our traffic team created a microsimulation for the existing conditions and one with the proposed modifications, which allowed the client to do a comparative analysis of the two scenarios where they ultimately decided it would be better to reverse the direction of the garage access point.

Utilizing microsimulations produces project outcomes that are better considered, more universally embraced, and ultimately successful.

Learn how Galloway’s transportation team can help you.