Parallel Queue Model Approach to Traffic Microsimulations

Nurhan Cetin
Dept.Computer Science, ETH Zürich, CH-8092 Zürich, Switzerland
Telephone: +41 1 632 0891
Fax: +41 1 632 1374
E-mail: cetin@inf.ethz.ch

Adrian Burri
Dept.Computer Science, ETH Zürich, CH-8092 Zürich, Switzerland
Telephone: +41 1 632 0891
Fax: +41 1 632 1374
E-mail: burriad@student.ethz.ch

Kai Nagel
Dept.Computer Science, ETH Zürich, CH-8092 Zürich, Switzerland
Telephone: +41 1 632 2754
Fax: +41 1 632 1374
E-mail: nagel@inf.ethz.ch

Submission date: Nov 15, 2002

Corresponding author: Kai Nagel

Number of words: 7500

Abstract:

In this paper, we explain a parallel implementation of a traffic micro-simulation model based on the queue model by Gawron. Within this model, links do not only have a flow capacity that limits the number of vehicles that can leave the link, but also have a space constraint which limits the number of vehicles that can be on a link simultaneously. The vehicles in this model follow their precomputed paths as in other route-plan-based simulations such as TRANSIMS. Since the queue model needs less data and computing power, it runs much faster than TRANSIMS for the same data. In the parallel implementation of the queue model we distribute the data onto a number of processors, each of which runs a smaller portion of the simulation. The parallel version gives a maximum speedup of 28 on 64 CPUs using Myrinet communication. For a realistic simulation of all of Switzerland, computing is up to 190 times faster than real time. The maximum number of vehicles simultaneously driving in that simulation is about 160000.