A Quantitative-Qualitative Comparative Evaluation of Traffic Simulators

Traffic simulation plays an essential role in the planning, evaluation, and optimization of urban mobility systems. There are many traffic simulators with diverse features, which makes it challenging to select the most suitable one for broader applications. This paper presents a comparative evaluation of 25 prominent traffic simulators, among which SUMO, VISSIM, Aimsun, TransModeler, MATSim, AnyLogic, Paramics, CORSIM, MovSim, UrbanSim, GAMA-Platform, TRANSIMS, Polaris, OMNET++, and CityFlow were filtered according to their popularity in academic and practical applications. This study qualitatively evaluated these simulators using performance measures such as API support, map integration, agent types, visualization quality, user accessibility, simulation scale, and operating system compatibility. These qualitative attributes were quantified using a multi-criteria spider plot approach. The results indicate that SUMO, GAMAPlatform, UrbanSim, and Polaris achieved the highest overall scores. Commercial tools like VISSIM, Aimsun, and TransModeler stand out for their advanced 3D visualization capabilities, making them valuable for industrial use. This study provides practical guidance for researchers and practitioners in selecting appropriate traffic simulation tools.