APPLICATIONS OF TRAFFIC CALMING TECHNIQUES IN RAWALPINDI

Abstract

One of the major problems that the developing countries like Pakistan is facing right now is the amount of fatalities that are occurring due to Road Traffic Accidents. According to World health organization Road Traffic Accidents cause about 1.2 million deaths and around 20-30 million injuries annually. The analysis carried out on the Road Traffic Accidents data collected from rescue 1122 for the Rawalpindi city also incurred quite similar statistics. As according to rescue 1122 data approximately 27 accidents occur in one day in Rawalpindi city, so this situation demanded the application of traffic calming techniques that can help in the reduction of these accidents and eventually calm down the traffic. Major objective behind our thesis was to initially understand the concept of traffic calming techniques that can help in the optimization of the traffic by changing the geometric design of roads and enhancing it towards safety. While analyzing the Road Traffic Accidents data it was identified that over speeding of vehicles was the major cause behind the accidents, so this necessitated the need of calming and slowing down of traffic with traffic calming measures. After identifying 6th road and Saidpur roads as our final site for applying traffic calming solutions were proposed for existing road traffic issues and problems in terms of LOS, intersection delays, ICUs, stop delays, vehicle delays and vehicle travel times. The proposed solutions included a plan for diversion schemes for allowing parking of cars at idle spaces in front of schools that was previously used by the concerned schools for their own private parking purposes. Moreover, raised crosswalks were also proposed for achieving our objective of traffic calming. Above proposed solutions were modeled and applied in VISSIM software and the results of existing and proposed traffic situation was compared in terms of vehicle delays, stop delays and vehicle travel times for seeing the effectiveness of traffic calming. VISSIM analysis showed a reduction of about 12 hours in eastbound while a reduction of about 51 hours in westbound in vehicle travel times when diversions schemes were applied. Likewise, % reduction for vehicle delays of 5% and 25% in east and west bounds were also observed respectively. Finally stop delays also showed a percentage reduction of 13% and 26% in east and west directions respectively.