URBAN ROAD NETWORK PERFORMANCE EVALUATION BASED ON CRITICAL TRAFFIC POINTS

Road traffic congestion is a central problem in most developing regions. Most urban areas have poorly managed traffic networks with several critical traffic points or potential congestion areas. The rapid growth of population in urban areas jeopardize the mobility with the consequences resulting into traffic congestion. Limited studies based on the critical traffic points to access the performance of urban road networks, which allow analytically prediction of for occurrence of traffic congestion exist. The current work evaluates the effectivity of urban road networks in Dar es salaam for easy and smooth distribution of resources and essential services to the public. The study used standard deviations derived from Travel time-delay data to evaluate these road network performances which were collected using test moving cars. Results indicate the critical traffic points that have standard deviations below 0.30 and above 0.10 derived from travel time-delay transition and congestion indices signify lower performance of an urban road network section due to jam and crowded traffic flow condition. whereas, those with higher values greater than 0.3 and below 0.1 for travel time-delay and congestion index respectively indicate high effectiveness due free flow phenomena. It is thus concluded that the road network with high number of critical traffic points indicated to experience jam and crowded traffic flow condition is the one less effective and hence need detailed study aiming at relieving the situations.