Effect of street geometry on the vehicular traffic throughput and its impact on smart cities mapping design

Traffic congestion, the main constituent of vehicular extrinsic flow resistance, has been an important factor in the design of routing algorithms. There are important intrinsic factors that can also aid these algorithms. This study proposes a new vehicular intrinsic flow resistance metric referred as sinuousness. To obtain this metric several scenarios are designed. Each scenario has a unique topology with varying amount of curves, curve-radii lengths, total path lengths, and other features. Simulated vehicles flow through these scenarios and velocity data is gathered. Simulations show that the velocity, and hence the sinuousness, depends on several street aspects, such as distance between curves, curve radii, and aggregated arc circumference. A sinuousness expression is derived. Results show that the proposed metric of sinuousness is proportional and in agreement with the inverse of the average velocity of the vehicles.