Effect of lane discipline on highway capacity

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.