Street traffic is composed of subsystems, the most important of
which are the vehicle, the street, the driver, and the traffic
processes. While previous studies have extensively investigated the
interactions of the subsystems, the purpose of this paper is to
demonstrate methods of considering the entire system as a whole in
order to show the comprehensive effect of a given modification.
As is shown pictorially, each interaction between all the
subsystems must be taken into consideration. The greatest
difficulty in modeling the system is the quantification of these
interactions. Various sources of this quantification are
available.
An example of this approach is given. Given the four subsystems
mentioned, economic relations between them are identified and
quantified. The dependency of total relevant costs on loaded
vehicle weight is then analyzed; the relationship between these two
variables as determined by the entire system is represented
graphically.