Traffic Congestion

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Due to rapid urbanization, the tremendous rise in number of vehicles is variably accompanied by ever increasing volume of traffic and intense traffic congestion on roads. Almost every city in India is facing acute traffic problem in regards to delay, congestion, pollution, accidents, parking etc. These problems contribute not only loss of precious manpower but also results in additional fuel consumption, development of mental stress and overall feel bad environment for the driver. Since traffic congestion has been one of the major issue that most of the metropolises are facing, many measures have been taken in order to mitigate congestion. It is believed that identification of congestion characteristics is the first step for…show more content…
The definition of congestion influences what measures are introduced to address it. Many definitions have been proposed to describe traffic congestion on roadways in urban areas. However, there is no universally accepted definition of traffic congestion (Downs, 2004). Congestion is a condition in which number of vehicles attempting to use a roadway at any time exceeds the ability of the roadway to carry the load at generally acceptable service levels (Rothenberg, 1985). Congestion can be defined as the situation when traffic is moving at speeds below the designed capacity of a roadway (Downs, 2004). Congestion may be defined as state of traffic flow on a transportation facility characterized by high densities and low speeds, relative to some chosen reference state (Bovy and Salomon, 2002). Traffic congestion is a condition of traffic delay (when the flow of traffic is slowed below reasonable speeds) because the number of vehicles trying to use the road exceeds the traffic network capacity to handle those (Weisbrod et al., 2001). Traffic congestion is travel time or delay in excess of that normally incurred under light or free-flow travel conditions (Lomax et al., 1997). Levinson and Lomax (1996) discussed desired attributes of a congestion index. Turner (1992) examined indicators of congestion and suggested that measures to…show more content…
K. Parbat (1996) conducted travel time study in Indore city, India using test car technique and evaluated the level of congestion through indices related to travel time. Roy et al. (2011) discuss a novel and interesting way to detect the congestion on the urban arterials in India. They suggest using a Wi-Fi signal emitting device and a receiver across the road to identify the congestion. This method was found to be successful in terms of high accuracy of classifying the road as congested or free flowing. Sen et al. (2009) discussed the characteristics of the ITS techniques that need to be developed to cater the traffic conditions and congestion in developing regions and presented a brief description of a few efforts being made in this direction. Dewan and Ahmad (2007) conducted a survey for car-pooling in Delhi and willingness of commuters for car pooling and they observed that car-pooling is one of the solutions to reduce the traffic congestion in Delhi. Pucher et al. (2005) summarize key trends in India’s transport system and travel behaviour, analyse the extent and causes of the most India’s urban transport crisis, severe problems, and recommend nine policy improvements that would help mitigate the

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