ASSESSEMENT ON THE CHALLENGES AND EFFECTIVENESS OF PEAK HOUR TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT IN ADDIS ABABA: A CASE STUDY FROM MEGENAGNA TO AYAT ROAD

Abstract

Beside the construction of a high quality road network, managing operational performance of the highway system directly increases a nation’s economic output by reducing travel time and costs. The Addis Ababa Traffic Management Agency tries to implement different remedial measures on the city arterials which aim to improve their operational performance; especially during the day’s peak period. Measuring the challenges and effectiveness of those management practices in the capital is the focus and novelty of this research. Due to its representative nature with two ways and an eight lane geometric feature, the route from Megenagna to Ayat is selected as a cases study. Observations like congestion pattern, video recording, direct field measurements and secondary data were the main sources for the analysis. Volume to capacity ratio analysis method was used to measure the existing operating performance of the route. The method of queue and delay analysis in working zone areas was used to quantify the delay on the route. Results from the performance analysis shows that, congestion is a concept beyond the serving capacity of roadway facilities. Even though the maximum traffic flow exhibited is only 80% of the road segments capacity, results from the queue analysis shows 255 veh-hr vehicles in waiting to traverse the segment. The delay analysis also shows a need of extra 13.74 minutes to clear the queued vehicles. Interruption from pedestrians and diverted vehicles, bottleneck geometrical features and safety conditions are the main identified challenges of the traffic management practice. Implementing the reversible lane as a remedy helps in diverting up to 21.22% of the peak traffic to the less congested direction and decreased the time loss by 1.67 minutes. Regulating the random crossing pattern of pedestrians, cycle time increment of traffic light on specific segments and restricting usage of on street parking during peak periods are proposed recommendation to improve the traffic flow.