As the world is urbanizing rapidly, traffic congestion has become a significant problem in many cities worldwide. Using the macroscopic fundamental diagram (MFD) to evaluate the traffic capacity of urban networks is advantageous compared to observing the traffic of individual roads as they can present a complete picture of the traffic conditions of a particular road network. In this paper, we studied the road network capacity of a 15.4km² region in Shanghai using the MFD based on microscopic traffic simulation with projected increased and decreased travel demands. We estimated the OD matrix with TFlowFuzzy in Visum using traffic count data in Shanghai from 2011 and 2020, and carried out traffic simulations using Vissim with travel demands ranging from 25% to 400% of the morning peak hour in 2020. This ensures that the highest level of the road network capacity is reached in order to construct complete MFDs. The results showed that the areas analyzed reached similar peak average flows per lane at different critical densities per lane. The traffic capacity and critical accumulation per area obtained are also similar to the results from major world cities, indicating the healthy capacity of the road network.

macroscopic fundamental diagram;microscopic traffic simulation;traffic capacity