A Novel Two-Lane Roundabout Model with Central Cross Structure

With the increasing number of family cars, urban traffic congestion has become more and more common, which has a great impact on people’s lives. In order to alleviate the traffic pressure caused by traffic congestion, the roundabout came into being. Compared with ordinary intersections, roundabouts are superior in traffic efficiency and traffic control. However, research has found that the number of halts per vehicle at roundabouts has increased relative to ordinary intersections, which means that there is an increased possibility of large-scale congestion and driving conflicts in today’s huge traffic flow. This makes it possible to add traffic lights to the roundabout to control traffic flow to alleviate traffic congestion and driving conflicts. This paper aims to improve the traffic model of the ordinary two-lane roundabout and analyze whether different traffic light control methods are conducive to improving the traffic efficiency of the roundabout in the scenario of heavy traffic flow. Four improved models are established and compared with basic two-lane roundabout and signalized intersection. Based on two scenarios with different traffic volume, we analyze these models’ performance through multiple evaluation metrics. Results illustrates that roundabout with central cross has the best performance in the two scenarios, and proves that these two traffic light control methods failed to improve the traffic efficiency of roundabout in heavy traffic scenarios.