Introducing a New Approach to Obtain Average Delay Time in Intersections and Roundabouts Using SIDRA and Optimized Group Method Data Handling Software

The average delay time of the nodes (intersections and roundabouts) in dynamic traffic flow is one of the key elements of predicting travel time. However, determining and updating the average delay time of the dynamic traffic flow as regards to the calculation of travel time has received very limited attention, even though most of the current techniques uses historical data for the statistical calculations. Average delay time of the intersections and roundabouts needs to be updated due to the changing of the dynamic traffic conditions. The aim of this study is to propose a method allowing to find a formula for determining the average dynamic delay time of intersections and roundabouts. The proposed method calculates the dynamic average delay time by using the output of the SIDRA intersection software (micro simulation transportation one) and finds the relationships among the effective parameters and their effect on the average delay time by using optimized GMDH software. Hence, for evaluating the accuracy of the suggested formula, the amount of average delay time obtained from Highway Capacity Manual (HCM) was compared with the real delay time calculated with the purposed formula. Numerical analyses by SPSS also show that the proposed approach can be applied in practice in networks of any size.