Dynamic Modeling of Large-Scale Urban Transportation Systems

Congestion in urban areas has become a major issue in terms of economic, social or environmental impact. For short or mid term, using dynamic road traffic simulation can help analyzing and providing guidelines to optimization policies of existing infrastructures. Today, because of the complexity of transport systems, classical modeling tools are limited to small geographical areas (of a district size). Computational time, together with simulation calibration, are notably very constraining at large scales. However, a new generation of models designed for metropolitan areas has arisen over the past decades. These models are based on a phenomenological relationship between travel production and the number of vehicles in a given spatial area of a road network, known as the Macroscopic Fundamental Diagram (MFD). This relationship, supported by empirical evidences from several cities around the world, has allowed the study of different traffic control schemes at a whole city scale, but was rarely used for traffic state forecasting. The aim of this PhD is to propose an efficient modeling tool, based upon the concept of MFD, to simulate and analyze traffic states in large metropolitan areas. The theoretical framework of this tool must be consistent and applicable for traffic state forecasting, development of new control policies, traffic emission estimation, etc. There are two major contributions in this PhD. The first one is analyzing the mathematical and physical properties of existing models, and formalizing the dynamics of several trip lengths inside the same urban zone. In particular, this formalization distinguishes between internal trips and trips crossing the zone. Flow merging and diverging issues are also addressed when congestion propagates from one zone to another. The second contribution is proposing a new trip-based model based on individual traveled distance. This approach allows to treat users independently (previously represented with continuous flows), and thus to define their characteristics more precisely to couple their trips with assignment models on different paths. Finally, examples of application from various collaborations are given in the last part of this thesis. It includes a simulation study of the Grand Lyon urban area (France), as well as new modules to simulate search-for-parking or perimeter control. This PhD is part of a European ERC project entitled MAGnUM: Multiscale and Multimodal Traffic Modeling Approach for Sustainable Management of Urban Mobility.

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