A New Continuous Flow Intersection for Urban Road: Architecture, Design, and Simulation

In the light that heavy left-turn vehicles and oncoming vehicles conflict at conventional intersection(CI), leading to discontinuity and low efficiency of traffic flow, this paper presents a new continuous flow intersection(CFI) for urban roads. The geometry physical model and design principles of the CFI are illustrated and the CFI is designed from following three aspects: traffic space, traffic organization and traffic control. Experiments taking the CI and corresponding the CFI as the reseach objects are carried on, and performance of the proposed the CFI is validated via VISSIM. Extensive simulation results under five traffic conditions have demonstrated the potential of the proposed the CFI for improvement of traffic efficiency, and the applicability of the CFI in China is discussed considering the characteristics of domestic urban intersections and it indicates that the CFI could be applied to domestic suburb roads.