Traffic Congestion Anil Kantak Transportation and Traffic Congestion Anil V. Kantak 1.

Traffic Congestion Anil Kantak

Transportation and

Traffic Congestion

Anil V. Kantak

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•Introduction: The movement of people and goods within a city is a special area of transportation with unique characteristics. Several modes of transportation compete or complement each other in providing transportation services in the city. A dense network of transportation services affects the efficiency of operation in an urban area that causes traffic congestion. There is a direct connection between transportation and the city growth.

•Pollution and congestion are additional costs related to transportation.

•Effect of pollution are two fold: negative effects on health of humans, animals and

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vegetation and expenditure for pollution reduction and cleanup. Congestion produces wasted productive time due to the extended travel time.

•Private automobile: This involves drive alone, drive with a passenger or passengers in a private car. Carpooling is the organized commute with a minimum of two people in the vehicle. Most common form of carpooling is the intra-household where two or more member of the household utilize same car. Carpooling between co-workers is less popular despite its potential to reduce congestion on roadways.

•Van Pooling: This is voluntary or company 3


Organized commute to work. Either a group of individuals agree to lease a van from a provider or company provides transportation to and from work. In several areas where there is severe congestion on the roadways, pressure is applied on the employers to reduce the number of trips generated by their employees through the institution of car and van pools. This reduces congestion on the roadways.

•Taxis: These are either owner operated or privately owned that provide transportation to the general public. Major markets for taxis are tourists, visitor, and business people. Also for people in a hurry and people who do not need a car at their destination tend to hire taxi service.

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•Buses: These usually are publicly owned mass transit system used for schoolchildren transportation, labor transportation and company sponsored workers transportation from the suburbs to the work places. These can reduce congestion considerably if used by the public on a regular basis.

•Light Rail, Rail Rapid Transit System, commuter Railway, Air and Water Services: All these modes help reducing the traffic congestion on the roadways in the cities. Park and ride where individuals park their vehicle and then ride public transportation, van pools or car pool are made available also.

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At present about 250-300 million trips are made by the Americans per day. About 80% of these trips are made by private vehicles. Heavy trucks carry freight into and out of the cities and smaller trucks are used for the local deliveries. Many cities have ports and airports which are the primary entry or exit points for passengers and cargo originating from or destined to a broad area. All these functions generate substantial traffic loads and congestions to the urban road networks.

Several transportation problems plague contemporary urban areas, the most prevalent being traffic congestion.

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Traffic congestion is created on fixed capacity road networks when traffic grows above a certain threshold, after which the level of service deteriorates to unacceptable levels. Capacity of roadway system is to a large extent determined by transportation system characteristics and policies such as geometry, signalization characteristics, and traffic management restrictions. The capacity is also determined by the driving habits of the drivers.

•Traffic Growth: Traffic congestion is directly related to the traffic growth. There are four components of traffic growth.

•The natural growth of the population: As the population grows, more vehicles are on the road7


Traffic Congestion

Traffic Growth Roadway Capacity

Growth Effects Locational PatternsTransport Behavior

Household CharacteristicsAnd Norms

Evolution of Society,Economy & Technology

TransportationSystem

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producing congestion unless roadways are improved

•Location Patterns: This is due to spatial distribution of residence, work, shopping, and entertainment places.

•Transportation System, Characteristics and Polices: Speed limits imposed by city and state, signaling service wait times, establishment of car pool, bus lanes etc. affects the traffic growth also.

The transportation behavior of people is affected by the characteristics and norms of individuals and households, which along with the locational patterns of places ad activities are

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affected by the evolution of the society, economy and the technology at a regional and national level.

•Effects of Traffic Congestion: Effect of traffic congestion are multiple.

•Loss of productive time

•Loss of fuel

•Increase in pollutants: There two ways the pollutants increase. One due to more gas burnt due to the traffic congestion, and second there is more time is spent when the engine is idle or stop and go traffic.

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•Increase in wear and tear of the automobile enginesHigh potential for traffic accidents

•Slow and insufficient emergency response

•People’s moods are often affected, which has negative impacts on productivity at work and on personal relationship

•Road rage incidences.

•Solution strategies: There are three categories of solution to traffic congestions

•Pricing: This is a method of making the people to drive less. The pricing can be implemented 11


via roadway use toll, parking charges, mass transit fares, fuel surtaxes, and area wide roadway use pricing. All these generates some revenue for the city.

•Objectives of pricing:

•Provision of disincentives for using private automobiles through higher cost of utilization, e.g., parking pricing.

•Provision of disincentives for using private automobiles without passengers in vehicle except the driver encouraging the carpooling.

•Provision of funds to expand mass transit systems this includes the fuel and other auto 12


specific surtax to fund development of new public mass transit systems.•Development of fare structure favoring spreading the morning and evening peak on

Public transportation system, i.e., offering lower fairs at off peak hours etc.

•Management and Policy:

•Measurement of ramp metering that controls flow entering freeway so that freeway operates at the optimal flow levels.

•City zoning that may enable authorities to control number of major traffic generators along congested corridors. It also allows the 13


•authorities to allocate future plans for the transportation networks. Enforcement of balanced employment and residential development that has the potential to reduce traffic.

•Flex time of staggered work hours that may help spreading the morning and evening peaks of travel demand.

•Employ restricted access according to which private or all vehicles are prohibited from certain streets or urban sections such as the transit ways and pedestrian malls etc.

•Regulation of parking, delivery zones, and times

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of certain operations, aimed at avoiding chaotic conditions such as multiple parallel parking, bottle necks and other hazards.•Demand responsive public transportation that is a nonscheduled passenger service aimed at helping people with mobility problems or serving low density areas of the city where employing a full public service will be wasteful. •Incentive strategies aimed at reducing number of automobiles on the roads and improving efficiency of public services. High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes, bus only lanes and incentive to use car or van pools.

•Advanced Technologies transportation:15


•Several urban transportation technologies are in experimental or limited real world application state today, these advanced technologies have a substantial potential in revolutionalizing the urban transportation as it is known today.

•Advanced Urban Transportation Technology Objective: There are five objective, informatics, safety, pricing, capacity enhancement and pollution reduction.

• Informatics: System efficiency improvements through Information Technology (Informatics): Highway surveillance with induction detectors or closed circuit cameras, real time variable message signs along freeways, route guidance,

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vehicle navigation and parking information and reservation are the basic components of informatics.•A substantial portion of delays are due to unpredictable events such as disabled vehicles, accidents and bad weather conditions. It is estimated that congestion delays cost over $100 billion each year. Highway surveillance gathers information on traffic conditions and delays and relays this information to the cars on roadways via the display signs highways. The information may also be directly sent to cars if they are so equipped. Once motorist keys in their point of origin and destination, the system can give the best route to be followed. 17


NOTE: WE WILL ANALYZE AN ADVANCED SYSTEM VEHICULAR CONTROL FOR THE TRAFFIC FLOW LATER ON IN THE COURSE.Safety: •The roadway accidents cost a large amount of money every year along with loss of lives and occurrence of injuries. Collision warning, collision avoidance and night vision are the primary components aimed at improving the freeway safety. The collision warning system sound alarm inside the vehicle if the leading car comes within a predetermined distance such as 100 yards or so. The collision avoidance system is a system that controls the engine speed and

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the brakes of the vehicle and if the vehicle comes within a predetermined distance of another vehicle then the engine speed will be reduced and brakes will be automatically applied avoiding the collision or reducing the impact force. The night vision systems detect the danger in no light conditions and take the appropriate action to avoid the hazardous condition.

•Capacity: With advanced technology in use future roadways will see less spacing between cars at increased speeds. The result of this would be a substantial increase of throughput of the roadway. This system may call for surrender of all driver functions to a computer on board the19


vehicle. Currently the concern about a potentially hazardous accident due to the machine controlled environment has kept this system from developing too fast.•Fixed guide way vehicles such as the buses increase the capacity of the roadway along with a higher level of service to public. This is a flexible system because same busses can also operate on streets without the guide ways.

•Pricing: The cost of advanced technology options is very high hence the pricing may be employed to at least partially recover the expenses and not put burden wholly on the tax collection. Pricing could discourage people to 20


•drive into congested areas. Vehicles will pass through a toll structure before parking to board the advance technology transportation where the vehicle license plates will be read and the bill will be sent to the address stored in the DMV. This can be completely automated.

•Environment: The pollution will be reduced due to advanced technology vehicles such as electric cars etc. Electric car is completely pollution free but it should be noted that the power plants that produce the electricity for the electric vehicles are not. The pollution from the internal combustion engines could be reduced by building Hydrogen cars, less

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pollutant fuels such as methanol, liquefied gas powered cars etc produce much less pollution than the gasoline cars. Further research and experimentations will be necessary before an answer is found for the pollution problem.

•Telecommunications:

•Tele-communications is efficient mode of transferring information without using transportation.

• Teleconferencing with visual media reduces need for transportation for businesses and other services.

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•Teleshopping (shopping on the internet) also reduces need for transportation. Banks, retailers, specialty shops, airline ticket counters, and many other shops can be accessed through the internet without having to visit these places.

•Telecommuting is another internet based application that can reduce traffic. In this option people work either at home or nearby satellite offices of the main company that is located far away. Any worker that produces results that is transmittable via the electronic medium can use this facility. Professors,

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•engineers, data processing personnel, designers etc. are prime candidates for this mode of working with minimal or no need for transportation.

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Traffic Congestion Anil Kantak Transportation and Traffic Congestion Anil V. Kantak 1.

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