A simulation procedure for the assessment of traffic management impacts on urban road safety

摘要

Recent statistics and research projects have shown that road accidents are one of the greatest cause of death in Europe. Moreover, almost half of these deaths takes place in urban areas, where the conflicts between different traffic components (i.e. vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists, etc.) are bigger. One of the levels which local authorities can handle to contain the phenomenon is Traffic Management, i.e. the set of all those measures reducing traffic volumes and conflicts among traffic streams, reducing vehicles speed and so on. Models and simulation procedures have been proposed in the literature to predict the risk and/or the rate of accidents on the elements of a road network. However, very few of them have been calibrated in urban contexts. In this paper, we present a simulation procedure for the assessment of the impacts of traffic management measures on urban road safety. The procedure consists of two main modules: the former aiming at the estimation of traffic flow on links and at junctions, the latter estimating by means of performance functions of urban road safety, the accident frequency on each element of the network given the average daily traffic flows. Specification and calibration results of road safety functions based on data gathered in the urban area of Rome (Italy) are presented. Preliminary applications of the procedure to the case study are discussed.