Abstract:
Alleviation of traffic congestion is a growing problem because of its effects on
trade, public transport viability and the inevitable environmental consequences in
the society. Due to the traffic delays thereby causing wastage of valuable person
hours each year it is estimated that the loss is about 0.1% of the Gross Domestic
Product of the country.
It is presumed that the traffic congestion could be reduced considerably by
hopefully increasing the capacity of roads by increasing the road widths and that
by having more lanes. However, in practice it has been very difficult and an
expensive task to widen roads and in order to increase the capacity. The widening
of the roads itself takes a long time with heavy expenditure on compensation for
land acquisition and also for construction. The marginal increase in the capacity
due to the removal of the bottle-necks but with the continued presence of lane
indiscipline does not make the exercise very cost-effective. Hence, in the first
instance it would be essential to initially explore all possible traffic management
measures which would be quick and inexpensive prior to expensive less cost effective
solutions.
