Road Traffic Congestion Analysis And Traffic Flow Modeling At Meskel Square Signalized Control Intersections

Transportation systems are essential to economic and the security of the nations. Therneffectiveness of a transportation system depends on its ability to support the reliablernmovement of people, goods, and vehicles from one place to another. An urban trafficrnsystem is an important yet complex transportation system composed of vehicles,rnpedestrians, traffic lights, and a traffic network structure. Problems related to urbanrntraffic is increasingly important, and many researchers are trying hard to solve them. Thernhuge number of vehicles causes serious problems like for example trafficrncongestion/jams, air and noise pollution, stress to drivers, and fuel and energyrnconsumption. rnTraffic congestion at intersections, the main focus of this research, is one of manyrnserious global transportation problems of both developed and developing countries forrnmany years and it always exerts a negative externality upon the society. In Africa,rnvehicle traffic congestion is a new phenomenon with its economic cost on thernproductivity of the cities' communities. Despite the lower car ownership levels and thernintensive road network expansion in Addis Ababa, traffic congestion at intersections hasrnbecome a serious problem in the day to day activities, specifically, during morning andrnevening peak hours. rnThe overall goal of this research work is to analyze road traffic congestion and torndevelop traffic flow model that describes the current as well as the future traffic flows atrnMeskel Square signalized control intersections. To achieve this objective, an extensivernliterature review and collection of primary and secondary data related to trafficrncongestion were conducted. The secondary data were collected by volume countingrnusing a stopwatch for 12 successive days (i.e. 3 hours in the morning, 2 hours in the middayrnrnand 3 hours in the evening) for each intersection. Using these data, first effectivernanalysis and discussion was made and then, a simulation model using Arena 14.00rnversion software was developed. The model were tested and validated under tenrnscenarios using the secondary data collected by choosing only one intersection. rnThe finding of the study shows that, traffic flow at Meskel Square intersection. The finding of the study shows that, traffic flow at Meskel Square intersections isrnoutlying comparing to the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM) requirements. This is notrndue to the low capacity of the road only but also due to poor traffic signal phaserncontrolling systems in the corridor. As per the analysis result shows, the Level of Service (LOS) of both intersections lays on “F” value in the morning and evening peak timesrnbased on the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM) standards. This shows there is highrntraffic congestion and flow delay at Meskel Square intersections in the peak hours. Afterrnvarious scenario analysis is tested on the signal time controlling phase, the level ofrnservice shifts from “F” to “D” in almost all approaches. rn At the end of this paper the developed arena simulation model was running for 10rndifferent scenarios time policy. The simulation result shows, the waiting times wasrndecreasing from scenario to scenario and the number of vehicles served at the greenrnphase increases. Even though the queuing lengths were comparable in all scenariornsimulation results, but it displays a minimum value in scenario 3 taken as the optimalrntime control policy. These values are (162 seconds red, 75 seconds green) to MeskelrnStreet, (169 seconds red, 68 seconds green) to Bambis street, (142 seconds red, 95rnseconds green) to Dembel Street and (178 seconds red, 59 seconds green) to BetemengistrnStreet. At this scenario the queue length per entity across each street reaches minimumrnvalue.

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