TRAFFIC CONGESTION

SEMINAR REPORT
APRIL 2016

Submitted to
Dr A. GOWRI
DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL ENGINEERING
NITK SURATHKAL

Submitted by
GOTTIMUKKULA AVINASH 13CV121

DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL ENGINEERING

NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY KARNATAKA,
SURATHKAL, MANGALORE-575025

NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY KARNATAKA,

SURATHKAL

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that the project entitled TRAFFIC CONGESTION that is being
submitted by the student GOTTIMUKKULA AVINASH(13CV121)
as a part of seminar during the even semester of 2015-16 is a record of bonafide
work carried out by them under my guidance and supervision. The results
embodied in this seminar report have not been submitted to any other University or
Institute for the award of any degree or diploma.

Dr. A. Gowri

Dr. K.N. Lokesh

Asst. Professor

Professor and Head

Dept. of Civil Engineering

NITK, Surathkal
Mangalore

Dept. of Civil Engineering

NITK, Surathkal
Mangalore

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Firstly, I would like to thank the Head of Department, Dr. K.N. Lokesh for giving me this
opportunity to take up a seminar this semester which helped us broaden our horizons in our field
of interest.

Secondly, my sincere gratitude to Dr. A. Gowri for accepting my request to guide us over the
course of the project throughout the semester, and taking time off her busy schedule to have
frequent project discussions and continuously monitoring our work . She has been a strong pillar
of motivation and has shared her wisdom regarding the subject and general project procedures
thus molding our overall approach towards the project.

I would also like to thank Dept. of Civil Engineering, NITK Surathkal for all their support and
help.

ABSTRACT
Traffic congestion is major problem which bothers urban traffic sustainable development at
present. congestion charging is an effective measure to alleviate urban traffic congestion. Traffic
congestion is one of the Worldwide urban problems, which can lengthen journey time, increase
energy consumption, aggravate environmental pollution and result in traffic accident. If we take
no measure to govern it, not only individual journey cost will be enhanced, but also the entire
municipal transportation system will paralysis and urban sustainable development will be
restricted.

CONTENTS Page No.

1.

INTRODUCTION

2. BRIEFING NOTE ON TRAFFIC CONGESTION

3. ELEMENTARY THEORY URBAN ROAD

CONGESTION CHARGING
4. LITERATURE REVIEW

13

5. REDUCING TRAFFIC CONGESTION

15

6 CONCLUSIONS

7 REFERENCES

REFERENCES

18

19

20

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Traffic congestion is a severe problem in many modern cities around the world. Traffic congestion has
been causing many critical problems and challenges in the major and most populated cities. To travel to
different places within the city is becoming more difficult for the travelers in traffic. Due to this congestion
problems, people lose time, miss opportunities, and get frustrated. There are chances that people lose
their lives in the ambulance itself, as it is stuck in a traffic jam. The fire brigade may not reach in time, thus
leading in damage to life and property. The traffic congestion directly impacts the companies. Due to
traffic congestions there is a loss in productivity from workers, trade opportunities are lost, delivery gets
delayed, and there by the costs goes on increasing. To solve these congestion problems, we have to build
new facilities and infrastructure but at the same time make it smart. The only disadvantage of making new
roads on facilities is that it makes the surroundings more congested. So for that reason we need to change
the system rather than making new infrastructure twice.

CHAPTER 2
BRIEFING NOTE ABOUT TRAFFIC CONGESTION

What is Traffic Congestion?

Congestion is a complex phenomenon that is related to both:
* the behaviour of traffic as it nears the physical capacity of the road system; and
* the difference between road users expectations of the systems performance and how the system
actually performs.
What are its causes and effects?
Traffic congestion is often the outcome of successful urban economic development, employmen
t, housing and cultural policies that make people want to live and work relatively close to each o
ther. Successful urban areas attract firms that wish to benefit from the opportunities available. H
owever, traffic congestion prevents people from moving freely and it can slow and disrupt the c
onduct of business activities.

Research indicates that, although they may not be thrilled by the prospect, urban road users are g
enerally prepared to live with some degree of crowded roads, as long as they derive sufficient ot
her benefits from living and working in their cities.
However, unless managed, congestion can lead to high degrees of variability and unreliability an
d eventually chronic delays and gridlock. Community and business tolerance to traffic congestio
n is greatly reduced when congestion becomes excessive.

What can be done to reduce traffic congestion?

There are many effective actions that can be taken to manage urban congestion.
Most require a network approach and involve a combination of 'access control', 'parking control'
and 'road or congestion pricing'.
Clearly, adequate capacity on public transport systems is required before congestion congestion
management measures are implemented and levels of service on public transport systems need t
o maintained after congestion management measures are applied. Some road users are likely to
choose alternative routes not subject to congestion management measures. Increased usage of ot
her means of transport such as taxis, park and ride, and bicycles are also expected.

CHAPTER 3
ELEMENTARYTHEORY URBAN ROAD CONGESTION CHARGING

2.1 Goal of Congestion Charging

Urban road traffic congestion charge refers that motor vehicles which enter into some region
or certain road section in certain time interval will be charged special fare. It is different from
highway charge, which goal is to increase income or repayment loan. The goal of urban road
traffic congestion charging is as the following: enhancing traveller's journey cost, urging people
to choose proper journey time and journey way, diverging traffic demand from time and space,
enhancing general speed of vehicles, meanwhile guiding travellers to change traffic structure,
shifting private car journey to large capacity public transportation journey, thus alleviating
supply and demand contradictory, realizing road unimpeded, and achieving the purpose of
pollution reducing, economical energy and safeguarding traffic safety in order to realize
sustainable development of transportation and city.
2.2 Pricing of Traffic Congestion
Theory of traffic congestion charge was proposed by Pigou (1920) and Knight (1924) first.
Waters and Vickery developed this theory in 60 years of the 20th century and put forward the
principle of pricing based on marginal cost from economic angle. They pointed out that traffic
congestion could produce negative externality, which made individual marginal cost of
transportation journey (mainly including time cost, oil consumption, vehicles loses, service
upkeep, parking fee) is smaller than society marginal cost (mainly including personal marginal
cost and other peoples time loss, fuel oil loss, pollution and traffic accident caused by traffic
congestion). When a person decided to drive out, he considered only his individual marginal
cost, and thus caused road demand to be high excessive. Traffic flow in certain road section was
easily to be saturated and traffic congestion was produced. Charging an extra fare to the
travellers in congestion section may reduce road demand and alleviate congestion degree.
Theoretically speaking, pricing of traffic congestion fare should be equal to the difference of the

society marginal cost and the individual marginal cost. However, on the one hand society
marginal cost in reality is difficult to be quantified, on the other hand the constraint condition of
this theory is that there is only one transportation way and only one path to choose, so we must
adjust in application according to the actual situation.
When determining how to price traffic congestion charging, the following several kinds of
factors should be considered:
1) Vehicle Types
The most important goal of traffic congestion charge is to limit the usage of vehicle and
encourage high capacity passenger transportation way. Therefore, the public transit with high
loan capacity should not be collected congestion charge or merely be charged less fare, while
low capacity vehicle should be charged more fare.
2) Congestion Degree
Congestion charge should be charged higher toward those road sections with high congestion
degree and long congestion duration time in order to urge travellers to change their journey way
and journey time; while the road sections with low congestion degree and short congestion
duration time should be free of charge or be charged low.
3) Road Network Situation
When traffic congestion charge is executed, some travellers will choose those non-charging
paths in road network. They will compare charging path to non-charging path from journey time,
traffic flow,
straight line coefficient views and so on to make their choice. Under this circumstance, pricing of
traffic congestion charge must be higher than the utility of non-charging path. Otherwise it will
not be able to reduce traffic flow.
4) Travellers Bearing Ability: Travellers bearing ability is a quite important factor which
affects charge standard. It manifests how much congestion charge the travellers want or can pay
for their journey. If neglects this point, the policy of traffic congestion charge will be unable to
implement because of public opposition.

3. Practice of congestion charging

3. 1 Singapore
Singapore is the earliest and the most successful city to implement congestion charge. In 1975,
Singapore government invested 6,600,000 Singapore dollars to attempt area license system
(ALS). About 600 hectare of the most traffic congestion region was taken as charge region.
Entrance was set up at the boundary of the region. Vehicles entering this region at the peak time
interval from Monday to Friday were controlled at the entrance. Except bus and high capacity
car, the other vehicles must purchase region pass ahead and put it on the windscreen. To those
vehicles having no pass, traffic police would record their number without stopping them and
retrieved fine in the future. Meanwhile there were bus special lines in charge region. Any
vehicles except public bus shouldnt be allowed to run on it, or would be punished severely. The
tracing investigation indicated that, after implementing region pass system, the amounts of
vehicles entering into congestion region were reduced from 74000 to 41500 during morning
time, the average velocity at peak interval increased by 30%, the proportion of journey with
public transportation increased from 33% to 69%, the proportion of carpool also greatly
enhanced. Some of the region pass system income was used to pay the expenditure of the system,
the others was used to construct road infrastructure.
In 1998, Singapore used electron road pricing (ERP) to substitute the region pass system, which
made charge to be more effective, more flexible and fair. Vehicles were loaded with an
immediate payment smart card and a characteristic encoder. When vehicles went through charge
entrance, the recognition system would distinguish and confirm vehicles information and
transmit it to the central processing system, which would compute charge fare according to the
information and deducts automatically from the smart card. If vehicle had not installed electronic
system or the amount of smart card is insufficient, the snapshot system could automatically
record vehicle number and transmit to the central processing system. Compared to ALS, ERP
can adjust the tariff according to different vehicles, different crowded condition, which can guide
travellers to choose different journey route, journey time and transportation vehicle. The effect is
remarkable both on charge collection and traffic flow adjustment. After the implementation, not

only congestion was reduced, but also urban road transportation system was utilized more
adequately.
3.2 London
As early as in 1991, London began to study the feasibility of road congestion charging. In
2003 London started urban road congestion charging system. The charge region is approximately
21 square kilometer. The charge time interval is from 7:00 am to 6:30 pm, from Monday to
Friday, on weekend and holiday it is free of charge. Tariff is related to vehicle type. Public bus,
taxi, emergency vehicles as well

as vehicles for disabled person neednt pay the charge. After the implementation, traffic
congestion in London has been alleviated obviously. Center traffic flow is reduced by 16%, time
of traffic jams dropped by 20%-30%, vehicle speed enhanced by 37%. Traffic situation has been
improved. Pollution made by transportation has been reduced a lot.
2.4 Charge Method
There are two methods to charge congestion fare: manual charge and electron charge. Manual
charge is done as the following: First divide congestion area. Vehicles entering into this area at
specific time have to buy region pass ahead. Law enforcement officials are equipped at the
region entrance to record violating regulation information, and sends traffic ticket to the driver
who violates regulation in two weeks. The investment of this method is few, but its efficiency is
low. The phenomenon of escaping taxes and fees often occurs and there is only fixed charge
pattern can be chosen which cant reflect congestion degree.
Along with development of information technology, technology of car license recognition,
vehicles status recognition, GPS, GSM and so on makes electronic charge feasible. An electronic
label is stalled on vehicles in advance. Electronic label read-write equipment is installed at all
entrances of charge region, which read vehicles electronic information and upload to the
accounts settlement center.

CHAPTER 4
LITERATURE REVIEWS:
Traffic congestion is a temporal condition on networks that occurs as utility increases, and is
characterized by slower speeds, longer trip times, and increased queuing. When volume of traffic
is high and so heterogeneous that the interaction between vehicles slows down the speed of
traffic, traffic congestion is the result. As demand approaches the capacity of a road (or of the
intersections along the road), traffic congestion sets in. When vehicles are fully stopped for the
period of time, this is colloquially known as a traffic jam.
2.1 EXISTING STUDIES ON CONGESTION:
A simple model was developed by Jack Mallinckrodt, 2009 on regional average congestion
delay, in a closed-form, differentiable function of regional transportation system with volume
and capacity data. This model can be used to reduce the risk generated due to congestion [45].
Different views were studied by Robert A. Johnston, Jay R. Lund, Paul P. Craig, 1995 on
congestion generation and degeneration. Their study revealed that, it is unlikely that roadway
construction or vehicle automation will be able to alleviate most major urban congestion in the
near future i.e. for another 5 15 years. Traffic congestion occurs when a volume of traffic or
modal split generates demand for space greater than the available road capacity. There are a
number of specific circumstances which cause or aggravate congestion; most of 8 them reduce
the effective capacity of a road at a given point or over a certain length, or increase the number
of vehicles required for a given volume of people or goods. Capacity allocation studies reveal
that approaches like laissez-faire allocation, allocation by passenger load, ramp metering, road
and parking pricing, allocation by trip purpose, rationing, and mixed strategies can be used for
reducing congestion.
Congestion leads to risk and finally may lead to accidents where urban accidents have the
highest percentage impact (75%) over the entirety of accidents; therefore they represent a crucial
event which potentially may lead to disastrous consequences. Artificial Intelligence may be
helpful for providing more powerful techniques to understand the main causes of accidents and

congestion. Accident prediction models were developed by Rahim F.Benekohal, Asma

M.Hashmi, 1992. Accident prediction models or the before-and-after study approach is
commonly used to estimate the reduction in number of accidents resulting from highway
improvements [68]. Bin Yuan and Wen-Hua Song, 2007 conducted a study on exploring and
accomplishing road traffic safety and rescue system based on 3S technology, which will provide
effective instruction platform for traffic instruction department.Industrial Engineering Research
on Urban Road Traffic Congestion Charging Based on Sustainable Development a journal paper
by SUN YE explained the congestion charging method

CHAPTER 5
REDUCING TRAFFIC CONGESTION:
Increase of congestion on urban roads provides a serious threat to economic growth and
liveability of our city regions.
Congestion can be reduced by either increasing road capacity (supply), or by reducing traffic
(demand). Capacity can be increased in a number of ways, but needs to take account of latent
demand otherwise it may be used more strongly than anticipated. Critics of the approach of
adding capacity have compared it to "fighting obesity by letting out your belt" (inducing demand
that did not exist before). For example, when new lanes are created, households with a second
car that used to be parked most of the time may begin to use this second car for
commuting. Reducing road capacity has in turn been attacked as removing free choice as well as
increasing travel costs and times, placing an especially high burden on the low income residents
who must commute to work.

Adding more capacity at bottlenecks (such as by adding more lanes at the expense of hard
shoulders or safety zones, or by removing local obstacles like bridge supports and widening
tunnels)

Adding more capacity over the whole of a route (generally by adding more lanes)

Creating new routes

Parking restrictions, making motor vehicle use less attractive by increasing the monetary
and non-monetary costs of parking, introducing greater competition for limited city or
road space. Most transport planning experts agree that free parking distorts the market in
favour of car travel, exacerbating congestion.

Park and ride facilities allowing parking at a distance and allowing continuation by public
transport or ride sharing. Park-and-ride car parks are commonly found at metro stations,
freeway entrances in suburban areas, and at the edge of smaller cities.

Reduction of road capacity to force traffic onto other travel modes. Methods
include traffic calming and the shared space concept.

Road pricing, charging money for access onto a road/specific area at certain times,
congestion levels or for certain road users

Traffic management[edit]

Traffic congestion detector in Germany.

Use of so-called Intelligent transportation system, which guide traffic:

Traffic reporting, via radio, GPS and mobile apps, to advise road users

Variable message signs installed along the roadway, to advise road users

Navigation systems, possibly linked up to automatic traffic reporting

Traffic counters permanently installed, to provide real-time traffic counts

Convergence indexing road traffic monitoring, to provide information on the use of highway
on-ramps

Automated highway systems, a future idea which could reduce the safe interval between cars
(required for braking in emergencies) and increase highway capacity by as much as 100%
while increasing travel speeds

Parking guidance and information systems providing dynamic advice to motorists about free
parking

Active traffic management system opens up UK motorway hard shoulder as an extra traffic
lane, it uses CCTV and VMS to control and monitor the traffic's use of the extra lane

CHAPTER 6
CONCLUSIONS AND REFERENCES:
This seminar report gives information about the traffic congestion mainly in urban areas and the
problems associated with it. Causes and effects of traffic congestion were given.
since 2001 there was rapid increase in

traffic congestion because of urbanisation and

development which needs to be kept to a minimum. different methods like Intelligent transport
signals and traffic management were done.
charging method was done by sun ye was explained in this seminar:
Making Scientific Plan
Urban road congestion charge is a system engineer involving government, public and
industrial benefit. Charge plan should include charge purpose, charge tariff, charge region as
well as charge method. Each item should be made clear and scientific and in accordance with the
local transportation condition and financial situation.
Traffic congestion charge will promote citizen to use public transportation. Therefore it must
take full development of public transportation as the premise. Firstly, the network of public
transportation must be able to satisfy peoples request for transportation accessibility,
conveniences and comfort. Secondly, public transportation should be entrusted with some
management priority, such as free of congestion charging, establishment public transportation
exclusive lane, transiting part of charge fund to public transportation invest and so on in order to
attract more people to take public transportation instead of car journey to reduce traffic
congestion.

References:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1md_t5XrJyd0a7aC1L1FnTmXzLoM9cxDZFd
_L2olLnk4/edit
industrial engineering research on urban road traffic congestion charging based on
sustainable development journal written by sun ye.
http://mobility.tamu.edu/resources/fhwa-hop-05-018/findings/
http://www.transportworks.org/about-transport-works/reducing-congestion
urban real world traffic written by arthi chowdary.