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Traffic Congestion and ASI approach of solution

Article · December 2019

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Ujwal Sah
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 Traffic Congestion

When considering traffic jams were frequent in ancient Rome (economically developed in its time), road
congestion seems to be a property of a healthy transportation system. Indeed, they can be an indicator of
economic movement – an economically dormant region will not need transportation. However, a fair
amount of congestion can slow down economic progress. Transportation is the backbone of economic
development, and its health is of utmost importance. So, how can we overcome congestion?
One might think that the most efficient way to solve transport congestion is to create enough road capacity
(width, quantity), and they are not wrong. However, this can be done smoothly only in a smartly planned
economy – development of the region is well planned (small or no compensation for land is required, no
litigation charges against the construction by owners of land or built-in houses). Similarly, there might be
a danger of over-investment (road capacity with zero congestion for the next ten years, but with double the
cost than roadway with marginal congestion) and under-investment (market forces might support
congestion because there is minimal investment cost per unit of flow). Furthermore, most important of all,
measures, such as widening roads, reconfiguration of problematic intersections, development of a network
to prevent a bottleneck at any location, while being beneficial by themselves might promote more cars to
appear, which sooner or later leads to new congestions. What should we do then?
Let us start with what causes these congestions. There are two broad reasons why we experience traffic
jams. First human factors involve difficulties such as moving or phantom bottlenecks, human error,
especially driver's error, parked cars causing drivers to merge lanes. In Nepal, congestion due to human
factors is frequent – marriage celebrations, protests, sava yatra are some of the evident examples. The
second is design flaws such as problematic intersections, the inefficient ratio for four-phased or two-phased
signals at a typical intersection. Nonetheless, as traffic demand increases, even impeccable designs may
seem flawed or maybe an economic burden, and probably neither humans will be perfect nor giving up
culture would be acceptable. Therefore, an ASI (Avoiding, Shifting, Improving) approach is often adopted
and advocated for reducing congestion.
1. Avoiding Trips
New technologies may help to reduce unnecessary mobility, such as teleworking, online shopping, whereas
an optimization of closeness between inhabitants and production (market) and leisure (entertainment) could
also be adopted.
Avoiding trips is not synonymous with restricting trips. Indeed, restricting travel is not an acceptable
answer. The world has developed due to convenient mobility. Restricting travel can result in an economic
slowdown. Road charging, a form of restricting travel, is even more problematic. It generates a multi-tier
system of those who can afford to travel and those who cannot. We could see only the wealthiest people
able to travel while we could restrict the travel and convenience of the lower-paid working classes. There
is a similar effect with restricting road use by registration plate number - the wealthier can buy two vehicles
with odd and even numbers; congestion gets worse because about the same number of vehicles are in use
while more cars are parked. The odd-even system, we often see in practice, also suffers from another
problem. Without any study restricting 50% of vehicles to reduce congestion may lead to underutilization
of transport infrastructure. The same roadway may be capable of incorporating 75% of vehicles without
any trouble. Any rule of thumb may hamper more than cause benefits for a complex problem such as
congestion.
In Nepal, avoiding travel does not seem much effective against congestion or maybe is already at its benefit
saturation - people are using cell-phones more than ever for their work, and online shopping websites are
flourishing as well. Therefore, perhaps the solution lies in the next two approaches.
2. Shifting Modes and Time
It implies a change from unsustainable transport to more environmental-friendly transport systems, such as
walking and cycling, or public transport, as well as shifting the start of operation time.
I. Timeshift

Staggered time of the start of operations by the numerous groups of employees within a given urban
agglomeration can help reduce congestion. Schools, offices, and companies usually start and end
their activities at similar times, which means that a vast number of people are moving in the same
direction, which causes congestion.

II. Encouraging the use of public transportation

We often hear about the role of public transit (or public transport, depending on country/region) in
reducing congestion. Transportation system planners believe that if the public transportation system
becomes efficacious, many people will park their vehicles or will not have the desire to have a
private vehicle, but that is a big "if." Why we have so many motorbike users in Nepal?

Transit is only valid at reducing pressure on roadways when it is competitive with driving in the
eyes of potential users. We know that the general public is made up of several distinct "market
segments" or clusters of attitudes. For some, time is a critical variable while for others, convenience,
or cost. Since transit competes for users in a relatively free marketplace (free market in terms of
open to competition), either it is competitive in a potential rider's view, or it is not. Too many times,
cities pour good money into creating transit infrastructure and services that from day one is not
competitive with other options in the eyes of the vast majority of the market (this was the situation
that Los Angeles was in, at least a decade ago). Congestion might have played an essential role in
the application of the "Company Registration System" in the recent past in Nepal. Now owners of
these public vehicles would compete to make their facility more attractive than competing
companies and in turn, would make the public vehicle more attractive.

Generally, three planning variables drive the mode choice decision (and one "political” variable,
namely price): network structure, system performance, and customer experience. Network
Structure is just that: a person says, "I am here, I am going there, where do I need to go to enter the
transit system and where does it leave me off? Is there a convenient stop or mode to reach the stop?"
System Performance is about the role of time in the system, including both traveling and waiting.
Customer Experience covers a wide range of elements, but ultimately comes down to this: when a
person completes their trip, do they feel like they made the right decision to use transit, or do they
feel it was a mistake?

Ultimately, a transit system that connects more people to more destinations quickly, and with an
experience that reduces perceived risk throughout the journey is one likely to be perceived as "high
 value" by the targeted markets. It is that value that drives not just the decision to use transit instead
of drive, but locational decisions as well: where people look for a place to live, where to shop, and
possibly even what jobs to pursue. If transit can accomplish this, it attracts considerable real estate
investment, which in turn leads to more transit use. It is different from just saying "TOD" (transit-
oriented development). If the transit is too slow, too out-of-direction, not convenient, and not
comfortable at the psychological level, then one gets higher densities but not necessarily a shift in
trip-making from the automobile.

A shift can also be defined differently - think of the congestion problem not in terms of eliminating it, but
in terms of relocating it. For example, Boston's famed $14 billion "Big Dig" project was about shifting
congestion from the center of Boston to its periphery. That might also be the concept behind the outer-ring
road in Nepal.
3. Improving
Improving is a two-sector work. One relates to infrastructure improvement - cycling and bus infrastructures
might need expansion or introduction. It includes everything we need in order to make traffic flow smooth.
The second one might not be so intuitive and involves using new technologies to reshape our transportation
systems. A few of them are below.
a) ITS (Intelligent Transportation System) concept can help in reducing headway between moving
vehicles, should increase lane capacity, and improves safety.
b) Traffic engineers have proposed a lot of models and strategies to model traffic and then devise
control measures based on traffic simulation. However, as of now, this is not likely to be a feasible
approach because traffic in states near congestion is a chaotic system: minimal effects can have
substantial consequences. Also, solutions are proposed mostly for an isolated point instead of the
whole network. In dense traffic, one driver that slows down for whatever reason, can cause a chain
reaction which leads to flow collapse that results from congestion. Nonetheless, it is a sector we
need to study further.
c) Getting road travelers to use Waze, Google Maps, GPS, publishing CCTV live feeds into the
Internet to find fewer traffic jams to the destination can also be helpful.
Other innovations may emerge if we start looking at microscopic traffic variables as well.
In conclusion, congestion might always exist in some form or other when we expect commercial success.
We need to manage the resources that we have control over (roads and road management). The other parts
(humans, vehicles) will manage themselves to a form of benefit/convenience equilibrium. Congestion
management is a function of a range of actions, from the policy level down to engineering and technology.
Besides, there is not a single generic silver bullet that can be applied universally to address traffic congestion
in all areas. Preferably its a coordinated combination of measures that need to be addressed on a case by
case basis at both regional and local levels.
 References:
1. ResearchGate. (2017). What is the most effective way of solving traffic congestion?. [online] Available
at: https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_the_most_effective_way_of_solving_traffic_congestion
[Accessed 17 Dec. 2019].

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