COMPRAM assessment and system dynamics modeling and simulation of car-following model for degraded roads

Abstract

The presence of potholes in roads is a complex societal reality in developing countries that leads to situations such as congestion, chaotic driving, and acceleration of road degradation. More and more money is spent on the maintenance of the same segment of road and on the repair of cars due to potholes. This complex phenomenon “traffic congestion in Kinshasa linked to degraded roads” is analyzed with the COMPRAM methodology. It is shown that more policy intervention is needed via improvement of legislation, road maintenance, and road monitoring. In this paper we elaborate on traffic flow models, system dynamics (SD), and COMPRAM. We briefly discuss the relationship between the “car-following” model and the “microscopic/macroscopic” traffic model. For measuring the pothole effect on road users such as cars, a simulation of a car-following model was done with system dynamics (SD). We considered two scenarios for simulation: a scenario with a single pothole on a one-lane road and a scenario with two potholes separated by a distance of 590 meters on a one-lane road. The results of the simulations demonstrate that in the presence of the pothole at the microscopic level, speed and travel time are negatively affected, impacting road capacity at the macroscopic level.