Assessing Quantifing The Level Of Traffic Congestion At Major Intersections In Addis Ababa (a Case For East-west Corridor)

Traffic Congestion is an ever growing chronic problem in the transportation system soon afterrnthe invention and mass production of automobiles. All major cities both in developed andrndeveloping countries are facing the problem due to increasing travel demand which followsrneconomic and population growth. Traffic congestion directly affects commuters with anrnincreased travel time, excessive delay in a queue, increased fuel cost, delay for importantrnappointment and job, loss in productive hours; and it indirectly affects the living standard andrnthe environment as well. Hence, traffic congestion cause upon road users and cities to incur arnsignificant amount of money for both economic and social costs. Quantifying the level of therntraffic congestion and understanding how much effect and cost are being incurred due to trafficrncongestion; hence, will be important for making improvement decisions and evaluaternimplemented mitigation measures.rnFollowing the economic and population growth in Addis Ababa, traffic congestion problem hasrnemerged and the problem is even growing faster. In this study, the level of the traffic congestionrnin Addis Ababa city was quantified using travel time approach. The city’s one of the mostrncongested East-West corridor was considered and travel time, traffic volume, and vehiclernoccupancy data were collected at four midblock and four intersections. Accordingly, the travelrnrate, the delay rate, total travel delay (Veh-Min and Per-min), buffer index and planning timernindex were calculated. And also, the average hourly travel rate is correlated with the averagernhourly traffic accident data and congestion spots and accident black spots were plotted on thernGIS map to see the relationship between the traffic accident and traffic congestion.rnAccordingly, the result showed that on average about 18,000 Veh-min or 38 Veh-day and aboutrn169,000 Per-min or 352-person-day are wasted at each major intersection entry and the cityrnincurs annually about 5-8 Million Birr per intersection only for vehicle and fuel cost. The resultrnalso showed that the city’s traffic accident rate correlated with travel rate better than trafficrnvolume and the congestion spots identified from questionnaire data conside with the black spotsrnidentified by the national road safety agency.

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