SUMO — The Complete Guide: Free Traffic and Transport Simulation
SUMO (Simulation of Urban MObility) was developed at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and is the most widely used open traffic simulator in the world. It is a microscopic simulation: every car, bus and pedestrian is simulated individually, with its own route, speed and behaviour — so you can watch queues form and dissolve at a junction.
SUMO
German Aerospace Center (DLR) / Eclipse
Microscopic traffic simulation — every vehicle modelled individually on a real road network.
Get it from the vendorWhat you can test in SUMO
- Junctions and signals — comparing signal plans, a roundabout versus a signalised junction, turning lanes.
- Networks — the effect of closing a street, a new road or changed traffic directions on a whole area.
- Public transport — lines, stops, bus lanes and timetables.
- Pedestrians and bicycles — crossings and paths.
- Emissions and noise — estimating emissions by vehicle type and speed.
How to build a model
1. Import the road network from OpenStreetMap using netconvert or the OSM Web Wizard. 2. Fix and edit in netedit — lanes, junctions and signals. 3. Define demand: traffic counts, origin-destination matrices or routes. 4. Run and measure travel times, queues and delays. 5. For external control and advanced experiments — the TraCI interface from Python.
What's missing
There is no all-in-one interface like commercial tools (Vissim, Aimsun), and work is split across several tools and the command line. Calibrating against real counts takes time and data. And a national or metropolitan transport model for strategic planning (the four-step model) is a different kind of tool.
Who it suits
Traffic and transport engineers, junction design consultants, local authorities, researchers in autonomous and connected vehicles, and students.
Companion tools
MATSim for agent-based simulation of a whole region, OpenTripPlanner for public transport journey planning, OSRM for fast routing, and QGIS for preparing data and mapping results.
MATSim
ETH Zurich / TU Berlin
Agent-based transport simulation at city scale — activities, routes and mode choice.
Get it from the vendorOpenTripPlanner
OpenTripPlanner Project
A multimodal routing engine — journey planning and public transport accessibility analysis.
Get it from the vendorOSRM — Open Source Routing Machine
OSRM Project
A very fast road network routing engine — routes, distance matrices and service areas.
Get it from the vendor
QGIS
QGIS.org
Open-source GIS for spatial analysis, layer work and map production.
Get it from the vendorBottom line
SUMO gives professional traffic simulation without a licence — ideal for testing junction and network alternatives, provided you invest in calibration.