Knowledge Assessment of the Practice of Traffic Impact Assessment among the Authority in Johor, Malaysia

Abstract

Developments inevitably bring negative impacts to the road network such as traffic congestion, without proper planning tool, the impacts will become more pronounce and severe. Thus, Traffic Impact Assessment (TIA) has become as an important document for the approving authority during the evaluation and approval of development proposal. In the decision making process, they have to acquire adequate knowledge to verify the feasibility and rationality of the application. This is one of the first study conducted to assess the staff’s understanding in the practice of TIA. The design of the survey was self-administrated questionnaire with the inputs from the staff from the local municipals, town councils and public work departments. The knowledge, practice and attitude of the authority in TIA were analysed using SPSS analysis. The study reveals the staff in the central office were knowledgeable but lack of potential staff in local offices which could be due to the institutionalisation of TIA in central region. The improvements as agreed by the authority were more detailed guidelines with standardised checklist, monitoring programme, compulsory training courses and competency test.