Carrying Capacity of Urban Traffic Network: Modeling and Empirical Analysis

Carrying capacity of urban traffic which is the threshold of sustainable development has a significant effect on urban planning, transportation demand management and urban system optimizing. In this paper, the definition of carrying capacity of urban traffic in the macroscopic view is given. In the model, peak hour traffic flow and traffic congestion coefficient is considered. Taking Beijing traffic network as an example, we calculated urban traffic carrying capacity of Beijing from 2002 to 2012 according to relevant statistical data. Furthermore, we studied the key factors which impacts Beijing traffic carrying capacity based on multivariate analysis, and used factor analysis and nonlinear regression to capture the internal relationship between the urban traffic carrying capacity and these factors. Finally, the predicted traffic carrying capacity of Beijing in 2013 similar to 2020 is given.