Traffic simulation for traffic congestion problem of Fatih Sultan Mehmet bridge of Istanbul Turkey

On a regular day, almost 200,000 cars use Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge of Istanbul to commute between European and Asian side of the Bosporus. This enormous volume causes the traffic congestion to become a problem not only endemic to the bridge, but also cascading some major arterial roads of the city. This study includes a simulation model to analyze the traffic congestion problem in Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge of Istanbul. The main focus of this research are to identify the bottlenecks of the system, to discover vehicle behaviors in these bottlenecks, and to create a simulation model to predict the level of congestion on the bridge that will occur with different arrival rates of the vehicles. Our simulation analysis shows that even though there is no significant difference between the number of cars arriving to the bridge from both directions in the evening rush hour, when both directions on the bridge have four lanes (without any counter-flow lane), east direction (Europe-to-Asia) suffers more from traffic congestion due to lane merging taking place after the electronic toll collection (ETC) plazas. The analysis also suggests that a counter-flow lane in favor of the east (Europe-to-Asia) direction significantly improves the average number of cars congested at the entrance of the bridge.