Proposta de remodelação de uma interseção rodoviária na cidade de Curitiba/PR com foco na segurança dos usuários e na capacidade de tráfego

Abstract

Intersections have been described as critical places within the urban road network, since they can easily lead to conflicts among the traffic streams, and therefore accidents. Specifically in the city of Curitiba (PR), one of them – located in the intersection between the Eduardo Sprada street and the Juscelino Kubitscheck de Oliveira Avenue, and within the Cidade Industrial de Curitiba (CIC) neighborhood – has constantly been registering traffic jams and several vehicle lines in its approaches during the peak hours, which ranked it as the 8th most congested place in the city. In this manner, the present study aimed at evaluating the applicability of the replacement of the current signalized intersection by a roundabout. Two types of roundabouts – i. e., modern-type and turbo roundabouts – were selected based on their positive recommendations in the scientific literature. The current capacities were determined according to the procedures established by Webster in the 1950’s and for each of the straight, left-turn and right-turn movements. The modern-type roundabout was evaluated according to its capacity and level of service, either from the point of view of mathematics (namely, equations defined by Brazilian intersection design manuals) or the results of simulations carried out in the AIMSUN software. With respect to the turbo roundabout, its performance was studied only according to the outputs of AIMSUN due to the absence of official procedures and equations in national design manuals. The traffic flows were calculated for the current year (2018) and after 15 years of service of the intersection (2033) from field-based estimations made in 2012 and 2015, and linear regression equations were developed. In a general context, the capacities of each approach in the signalized intersection were exceeded in the morning and afternoon peak hours (from 6:30 to 9:00 AM and from 5:00 to 8:00 PM), and at least one of these approaches (designated as T3) typically showed vehicles that could not turn left in the first optimum cycle. The replacement of this intersection by a modern-type roundabout with two inner lanes could be taken as a promising solution only in the current year, in which all of its approaches would show a level of service (LOS) A. However, these same approaches would depict LOS F after 15 years – i. e., the traffic flows would overcome the capacities of all approaches. This can also be concluded from the data collected on AIMSUN in 2033 in a general context, according to which an overall average delay (ADE) of 113.s can be found. In terms of the turbo roundabout, the results are not promising either because the simulations carried out on AIMSUN indicated the presence of many vehicles in the approaches and ADE values always higher than 45 s in 2033, even though small degrees of improvement could be seen in one of the approaches in 2018 by changing from the modern type roundabout to the turbo roundabout. In general, the data suggest a global (and not specific) solution for the intersection in which other modals and public transportation may be considered to decrease traffic flows. In either case, the construction of an interchange may be another solution for the operational problems in the current signalized intersection.