Analyzing traffic delay at unmanaged intersections

Abstract

At an unmanaged intersection, it is important to understand how much traffic delay may be caused as a result of microscopic vehicle interactions. Conventional traffic simulations that explicitly track these interactions are time-consuming. Prior work introduced an analytical traffic model for unmanaged intersections. The traffic delay at the intersection is modeled as an event-driven stochastic process, whose dynamics encode microscopic vehicle interactions. This paper studies the traffic delay in a two-lane intersection using the model. We perform rigorous analyses concerning the distribution of traffic delay under different scenarios. We then discuss the relationships between traffic delay and multiple factors such as traffic flow density, unevenness of traffic flows, temporal gaps between two consecutive vehicles, and the passing order.