Major Problems in the Urban Areas Caused by Traffic Congestion

Major problems in the urban areas caused by Traffic Congestion & their proper solutions: Dillee Ram Dangi Civil-062 Batch /IOE, Pulchowk Campus Email: [email protected]

Introduction Basically, road transport is the major mode of transport which connects the whol wholee coun countr try y in to the the netw networ ork k esta establ blis ishi hing ng a new new comm commun unic icat atio ion. n. It improves the whole economy growth of the country. Besides the different advantages of the road transport human are facing different problems due to the the lack lack of its its prop proper er mana manage geme ment nt,, repa repair ir & main mainte tena nanc nce. e. Amon Among g the the diff differ eren entt prob proble lems ms of road road tran transp spor ort, t, traf traffi ficc cong conges esti tion on is the the emer emergi ging ng   pro probl blem emss in the the urba urban n area areass nowa nowada days ys.. Some Some genu genuin inee issu issues es abou aboutt the the  problems & solutions of traffic congestion are tried to discuss in this article.

Traffic congestion: Traffic Congestion is the presence of delays along a physical pathway due to the presence of other users. This is the major problems of transportation in urban areas. Due to this, everything's are delaying: road users can't reach to the destination, lack of services at the times people need, lack of services on the the rout routes es peop people le need need.. Due Due to the the traf traffi ficc cong conges esti tion on in the the diff differ eren entt inte inters rsec ecti tion onss the the free free flow flow of the the vehi vehicl cles es is abou aboutt to 15 km/h km/hrr in the the Kathmandu Valley.

Effects of Traffic Congestion: All traffic congestion is caused by excess demand. When the sum of the traffic on an entrance ramp and the traffic on the adjacent main lanes exceeds the capacity of the lanes downstream from the entrance ramp, a queue will form. The queue is quite sensitive to the amount of excess demand. For  example, if the demand on a four-lane freeway is 8,400 vehicles per hour and the the capa capaci city ty in a bott bottle lene neck ck is also also 8,40 8,400 0 vehi vehicl cles es per per hour hour,, we expe expect ct

unstable operation with very little queue. If the demand rose to 8,600 vehicles  per hour, which is an increase of only a little over 2 percent, 200 cars would stack up into a queue in an hour. Each lane’s 50 cars of queue, if we assume maximum, or  jam, density to be about 250 cars per mile, would extend not quite a quarter of a mile. The speed in that queue would be a little less than 10 mph on average (2,400 vehicles /hour at capacity divided by 250 cars /mile equals 9.6 mph). A 10 percent increase in demand would create a mile of additional queue. Therefore, demand only has to exceed capacity by a few  percentage points to create severe congestion.

Fig: Traffic congestion in Kathmandu

Major Causes of traffic congestion: 

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Due to the haphazard moving of bicycles, bikes, taxis without obeying traffic rules.  No sufficient wide roads to meet the demand of increased vehicles Due to the negligence about traffic rule and regulations.

 Unnecessary strikes & Chakka jam in the road.  Due to the crossing of the road by pedestrian from anywhere.  Unnecessary delay of vehicles in the intersections.

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Crowded streets and increased pollution caused by everyone driving their individual cars. Each car waits longer in traffic because of the amount of cars on the street, therefore increasing the amount of time spends on the road. Each car contains only a few people, yet its engine could power more people's journey.

Solutions: 

Segregation of the vehicles as per their speeds & their sizes and provide different lanes for different category vehicles.

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Increase roadway throughput to meet the increased traffic demand.

 Make approach with fixed route transit, flexible time program. 

Make approach with the implementation of Intelligent Transportation System like Incident management, Corridor management, advanced vehicle system, advanced traffic control, Real time ride matching, integrated transit & fair system.

 Improvements to the streetscape, such as better footway lighting, bus

shelters and general landscape management such as removing graffiti and abandoned cars.  Proper management of lighting system at intersections.  Strictly obey the traffic rule & regulations.  Declare the end of strikes in the roads.  Make a slightly larger vehicle with a slightly larger engine, fill it with

 people going to a similar destination and decrease the traffic (and the amount of time spent on the road) as well a decreasing the overall amount of pollution because of the higher percentage of people per  vehicle/engine. Discourage the small vehicles and increase the High Occupancy Vehicles.

Conclusions:

In Government site, Department of Roads with alone takes the responsibility to manage the roads. But in fact only DOR can't minimize the traffic congestion. If we think about this problem and can realize it is our genuine issue and become careful about it, the problem will be tends to minimize. To obey traffic rule & regulation is the responsibility of the civilized road users. To take the new vision targeting the traffic congestion problems is the government's responsibility. Tinkune - Suryabinayak road has just extended to six lane roads and declared such road as a traffic congestion free road. Like this, the concerned body should be attentive for other roads for new lane &  proper maintenance in time.