Evaluating the impacts of ITS applications using microscopic traffic simulators

Impacts of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) applications can be well estimated using microscopic traffic simulators. A necessary condition to achieve this is the correct implementation of the ITS functionalities into the simulators. In the studies described in this paper, the implementation has been realized in two ways: (a) by programming customized plugins for the Quadstone Paramics simulator, and (b) by linking the VISSIM simulator with the Swarco EC-1 traffic signal controller. The studied applications covered a bus priority strategy for signalized junctions as well as ramp metering algorithms. In both the studied cases, the simulators were able to reproduce functionalities of the implemented ITS applications well and provided a good environment for testing impacts of these applications. A special attention, however, needs to be paid to the interface between the simulators and ITS application modules.