Modelling the relationship between saturation flow and urban activities

The capacities of signalized intersections in urban areas vary in different regions. Even when attention is paid to the fact that only the intersections are selected from different land use regions and all remaining conditions are ideal, differences in traffic flow values are observed and the capacities of the intersections may be affected from different land uses or different travel purposes. The results of some researches have shown that differences which are related to land uses in saturation headway are remarkable. In this thesis; land use distributions are carried out by diversifying in nine different intersection points selected from various locations in İzmir. Land use areas are diversified as Hospital Zone, Central Business District, Residential Area, School Zone, Shopping Area and Trade Zone as differences of ground floor usages of buildings are designed taking traffic attraction into account. Correlation between ideal saturation flow rates and start respond times in the areas where land usage variations exist are determined using simple analytical methods and modelling. It was observed that the data of land use collected in monitoring areas of an intersection until the previous and next intersection connections play an effective role on start respond times and saturation flow rates. Start respond times of drivers are decreased in densely populated residential areas. As another important result of the study, it has been determined that land use functions reduce ideal saturation flow rates and parameter values of diversified land uses have been obtained.