Development of a Railway Crossing Simulator for Multi-phase Traffic Flow and Safety Analysis

Abstract

From a systems point of view, railway crossings are the weakest point in the railway system, accounting for a major part of fatal operational accidents in spite of various countermeasures taken. As always, high priority continues to be given to safety countermeasures. With a view to more effective and elaborate accident prevention, the authors have developed the simulator using a personal computer to analyze complicated traffic situations near a railway crossing caused by train/road traffic, crossing installation, etc. It is aimed at reproducing the traffic conditions such as traffic jams or accidents, visually, real-time and conveniently in order to evaluate safety, effects of equipment improvement or new control strategy of gate and alarm, eventually contributing to establishment of proper standards for signal design. This simulator consists of two subsystems: (i) traffic flow analysis simulation system and (ii) visuality analysis simulation system. (i) is to analyze quantitatively traffic flow around a railway crossing, by means of a micro model based on construction and causal model. (ii) helps human sensitivity assessments such as visuality using 3DCG (3-dimensional computer graphics). The simulator is linked to the nationwide crossing database covering about 40, 000 sites. Thus it realizes a highly flexible and useful system capable of both general and individual analyses.