Cost and Time Benefit Analysis of Signalized ...

Cost and Time Benefit Analysis of Signalized and Coordinated Traffic Intersections at Guwahati Bypass Road

Author Name : Bibhuti Bhushan Bhardwaj, HenaChandini Devi, Bidyut Bikash Boruah, Rajpritom Bora, Bhaskar Jyoti Hazarika, Sumit Agarwalla, Barelong Terang, Shrweta Dutta

ABSTRACT

Traffic congestion is a reflection of the infrastructure planning and development of a city. Since infrastructure development is dynamic, the capacity of roads is built to accommodate a certain threshold at a time; once that threshold is reached, congestion occurs. As the economy grows and more people can afford to buy cars, the roads slowly fill up, worsening the condition of traffic congestion. However, irrespective of the reasons of increasing traffic congestion, the same needs to be eradicated or reduced to ensure that the vehicle operating cost of the user doesn’t get severely affected. At a microscopic level, a jam can be caused by bottlenecks, moving bottlenecks or inefficient intersection management. From the construction of fly-overs to the construction of rotary, there are many solutions to traffic jams at intersections. But, traffic signal, because of its advantages is mostly preferred over the other options. But designing a traffic signal invites a lot of data collection and analysis too. Guwahati, as a city has crossed the blooming stage and now is exploding in terms of road traffic. The arterial roads of the city viz. G.S. road, R.G.B. road, M.G. road etc. reach saturation state during daytime and hence are avoided by most of the travelers who commute through the city and not within the city. The bypass road i.e., NH-27 is primarily used by those commuters. But the traffic congestion problem has become a serious concern in the last couple of years on that road too. This is mainly because none of the intersections on that road is scientifically controlled. Manual control not only complexifies the situation but sometimes increases cost too. An attempt to signalize and coordinate three important intersections on the bypass road is made and a comparative cost and time analysis with the present condition is also carried out in this study.

Keywords: traffic, congestion, jam, signal, intersection, coordination, cost analysis, time analysis, benefit