DST - Desarrollo de soluciones tecnológicas de TIC

This chapter reviews the available literature on five fundamental aspects of traffic management: key definitions, measures, strategies, planning of traffic management activities, and requirements for application of traffic management.

• Key Definitions

The key definitions began with a modal definition of transport system that consists of objects and subjects of traffic management activities. The term traffic management is selected from different terminologies to define the efforts to balance demand and supply in transport by the measures. The traffic management measures are defined and classified by transport modes and characteristics. The traffic management strategy is also defined from a general perspective, on a spatial scale, and in nature of traffic impacts as well. Traffic Management Plan is a new approach that adopts a new type of plan, which is proposed to fulfil the gap between long-term transport development plans and daily traffic management activities. • Traffic Manageme nt Measures and Strategies

In the past, traffic management was limited only to the area of traffic control and regulation of road traffic. Since 1970, traffic management has been extended into different areas and has integrated different disciplinary into its concept (Kreil, 1973). Today, traffic management includes a wide range of measures, from the original traffic engineering to economical, administrative and organisational and information measures.

Application of Traffic Management Measures

In general, traffic management measures have been applied widely in developed countries, especially in European countries, where the traffic management has been significantly contributed to the success of many liveable cities. However, the review based-on a study in 1997 shows that the level of application was still below the medium level in most of the investigated countries, except Germany. In this country, the majority of the regions had a middle or high level of application at that time. Therefore, a German experience and approach in promoting traffic management should be examined closely.

Formulation of Traffic Management Strategies

Remak and Rosenbloom (1976) adopted the compatibility analysis in formulating packages of traffic management measures. They presented a pair-wise matrix in which pairs of measures are defined as mutually supportive, conflicting, or neutral. This approach was also employed by May and Roberts (1995), who interpreted the term mutually supportive into three lower criteria: complementary, financial supportive and public acceptance supportive. It was modified later by May, Kelly et al. (2006), who proposed two types of principle to integrate measures: the pursuit of synergy and the removal of barriers. The strategy mask was adopted by FGSV (2003) presenting transport situation, traffic management measures, relationships between the measures and requirements for implementing these measures. • Planning of Traffic Management Measures Activities

Traffic Management Package in Transport Development Plans

This approach normally provides a very comprehensive plan, which covers all aspects of transport, including infrastructure, public transport, and management. This approach has been applied in many developed cities, but not well practiced in Germany (Bohlinger, 2006). The main issue is that the planners, decision makers, and implementers normally focused on infrastructure projects, traffic management objectives are often ignored or thrown out from the priority lists. The examples in Vietnam indicated that traffic management was considered during planning process, but finally excluded from the list of recommended projects.

Traffic Management Plan

For the concept of an independent Traffic Management Plan, the review presents an overview of the progress in the USA, the UK and Germany. In the USA, the travel reduction programs are recommended to apply a five-step planning process, which was introduced later by the Institute of Transport Engineers. In the United Kingdom, traffic management was strongly recommended to integrate into transport development plans, but in practice, traffic management is considered as a complete alternative to infrastructure and heavy public transport. In Germany, the reviewed literature presents a number of urban and regional scale projects, in which solutions were searched and found only among traffic management measures. This situation provides practical foundations for the study to develop the theoretical concept of a Traffic Management Plan in the urban transport planning system (Bohlinger, 2006). Although efforts are needed to complete the concept of Traffic Management Plan, this approach will be a future way for promoting traffic management.

Assessment of Traffic management Measures and Strategies

The study on current literature found that the current approaches in assessing traffic management measures wildly apply multi-criteria assessment models, which allows assessing both quantitative and qualitative criteria simultaneously. Most of the models are phased into two steps to answer two basic root questions:

§ What will be impacts of proposed traffic management measures? Moreover, how much are the scale and intensity of the impacts? (Estimation of impacts).

§ What are the most suitable measures to solve problems of the targeted area? (Evaluation of measures).

The criteria to assess the measures are normally categorised into two groups:

§ Effectiveness of measure including improvements of safety, mobility, economic efficiency, and environment.

§ Applicability of measure, including the difficulty to acquire costs, technical systems, institutional participation and public acceptance.

In the general studies, qualitative assessment is widely applied in order to give recommendations on applicable measures or strategies for further specific studies. The evaluation of the measures is usually conducted by rating methods.

• Requirements for Traffic Management

Planning and implementation of traffic management activities require a set of basic conditions, including laws and regulations, technical resources, finance, institutional participation, and public acceptance.

• Remarks of Limitation

Finally, statements of limitation of this literature review should be clearly presented:

§ First, one may have questions about the lack of information about traffic management application in Asian cities. Reasons are many, but the main consideration is that experiences of traffic management in Asian cities are unique by cases.

§ The second question may be asked for absence of review on traffic management in motorcycle dependent cities. So, the answer is presented in the next chapter together within the framework of urban transport problem analysis for MDCs.

§ One may ask question on the lack of discussion about computerising tools for estimation of impacts and evaluation of measures and strategies. The reasons are many, but the first one can be accounted is that the characteristics of this study employs a general top down approach in finding possible solutions for different MDCs. The second reason is that the available computerised tools are either focused on car-based urban road traffic or deeply focused on specific transit system. One needs further studies to select proper planning tools for traffic management in MDCs.