Traffic Performance Evaluation for Selected Streets within the Southern Part of Al-Najaf City Network

Abstract

Urban streets are essential parts in cities and their development can enhance various aspects of economic life and social activities. Al-Najaf city is one of the Iraqi developing cities that has been suffering from traffic congestion at various sections of its street network. The reasons, locations and intensities of these congestions are important to be regularly diagnosed for two key reasons: first, in order to choose the right traffic engineering solutions and second to adequately prioritize the funding required for planning and implementing the traffic management programs for these congested sections. This paper attempts to evaluate the performance of the main urban streets located within the southern part of Al-Najaf city street network during evening peak hours. The methodology includes collecting field data and conducting traffic surveys such as traffic volume, travel time and free flow speed surveys. The evaluating approaches illustrated in the U.S Highway Capacity Manual are adopted as a tool for assessing the operational performance for the selected urban streets. The results reveal that there are several segments that operate at their capacity (LOS E) or even under congested flow condition (LOS F). The analysis also shows that whereas some segments are with good LOS using volume-capacity ratio (v/c) criterion, they are actually with low LOS based on field observations or when using travel time as a performance measure. This indicates the inadequacy of using v/c ratio alone in evaluating urban streets because part of the congestion at such streets is due to side friction operational delays rather than over traffic demand.