Abstract
As one of the planning alternatives, a network with a roundabout at the bay center has been suggested for some congested bays especially in Japan. However, no research can be found which models the performance of a marine traffic roundabout. This study aims to analyze traffic phenomena of ships in a roundabout for evaluating the performance of a marine roundabout. A microscopic mathematical model was built to analyze the traffic behavior from a view point of traffic engineering. The model describes the ship behavior trying to merge onto the circulating lane from an approach of roundabout, which is recognized as a sequence of T shaped crossings, and models the time adjustment behavior of merging ships to have a safe merging into the stream of circulating ships. The validity of the proposed technique has been tested through a case study.
