Introduction. In the modern world, the transport infrastructure of cities faces significant challenges related to the growth of traffic intensity, congestion and the need to ensure road safety. Among the wide range of engineering solutions and technologies aimed at solving these problems, it is worth highlighting the issue of justifying the choice of planning solutions in places of the highest concentration of traffic flows - transport hubs. International experience shows that the construction of roundabouts is one of the ways to optimize traffic, reduce congestion and improve road safety. Therefore, it is important to consider this type of planning solutions for transport hubs in terms of the feasibility of their use on the city's street and road network.
Problem Statement. One of the main principles of traffic management at high-intensity intersections is the arrangement of signalized or roundabouts. In the conditions of dense urban development, the issue of justifying the choice of intersection design solutions is of particular relevance, because due to the significant cost per unit area of urban territory, its alienation for a transport infrastructure element is a very complex issue, the solution of which requires a comprehensive assessment of all options using various methods for evaluating the choice of intersection design solutions on the city road network. One of these methods is microsimulation, which can be used to calculate LOS (Level of Service), transport and operational, environmental and energy characteristics, etc. within individual elements of the road network. Despite the considerable attention paid to the design of roundabouts and regulated intersections in domestic regulatory documents and scientific research, there is currently no clear argumentation to justify the choice of their planning solutions. In this regard, it is important to assess the effectiveness of both types of planning solutions depending on changes in traffic intensity within them in order to obtain the main indicators of their performance for further consideration when justifying the choice of planning solutions for transport hubs.
Purpose. Analysis of efficiency, determination of advantages and disadvantages of planning solutions of transport hubs by the type of roundabout and signalized intersection.
Materials and methods. The main way to analyze the effectiveness of planning decisions is to use microsimulation using specialized software PTV Vissim.
Results. Using the PTV Vissim software, analysis and collection of transport performance indicators within a roundabout and a signalized intersection were carried out.
Conclusions. The feasibility of arranging roundabouts can be substantiated on the basis of calculated indicators obtained using a microsimulation tool, including the number of vehicles that passed through the intersection, time delays, and traffic speed. As a result of the experiment, it was found that with the intensity of incoming traffic flows in the range of 1 500...3 000 vehicles per hour, the number of vehicles passing through both the signalized intersection and the roundabout almost does not change (the difference varies within 3 – 6 %). At the same time, the difference in the absolute number of vehicles passing through the roundabout is 26 – 33 % higher (depending on the intensity of the incoming traffic flow) than the number of vehicles passing through the signalized intersection.
