Influence of motorcycle taxi on the operational behavior of vehicles in unplanned urbanizations

In many cities, traffic is only planned on the main road network. Likewise, these roads delimit the urbanizations, where there are markets, medical centers, educational centers, among others. However, they do not have a public transport network and system. In this context, the most affected are the users who need to move to the interior of these urbanizations. Given this, the motorcycle taxi mode emerges as an informal public transport mode that provides accessibility to the interior of urbanizations for people with purchasing power B to C, but at the same time generates discomfort on other vehicles. This is incident at the intersections of main roads where motorcycle taxis have their informal stops. For this reason, the present investigation used as a case study a signalized intersection located at the intersection of an arterial road with a secondary one in the city of Lima. Here, the presence of an informal motorcycle taxi parking lot was identified, where the behavior of the vehicles, control delays, waiting times, and the trajectories described by the motorcycle taxi from the intersection to an urbanization located 1 km away were analyzed. Through a microsimulation model, the efficiency of the vehicles with and without the presence of motorcycle taxis was evaluated. It was found that the delay is reduced by 27% when there are no motorcycle taxis, as well as the waiting time. Likewise, it was identified that motorcycle taxis have a radius of influence of approximately one kilometer around the intersection studied, connecting users to the interior of this urbanization.