In the day-to-day life of a commoner, traffic and the issues related to it, has become an inseparable part of everyone’s life and, traffic congestion happened became a huge problem in our lives. It leads to an increased number of problems with increased deaths and traffic as a major reason becomes a barrier reaching out for help. This as one of the issues that has given birth to traffic studies and analysis.
If we need to summarize traffic studies and analysis in a few sentences, it is a vehicular or pedestrian traffic count in which observations are made and passed along spatially separated point routes, roads, paths, or intersections in specific time and intervals through either manual observations or automated observation.
The major objective can be defined as counter measures for improvement of traffic conditions to solve current traffic issues & other multiple measures including road development and public transport & respective improvements required accordingly.
Meanwhile we can also say that, Traffic studies are carried out to analyse the traffic characteristics, which of these studies helps in deciding the geometric design features, traffic control of or safe & efficient traffic moments.
There are various methods that are practiced for traffic studies and analysis globally, mainly roadside technology, number plate identification, information services, and traffic flow data, speed information, destination survey, and a lot more.
In manual method, a set group of well-trained people, practically record the total number of vehicles crossing and section of the road in the desired period of time on record sheets manually. It gives the full detail of the traffic like various classes, stream & turning movement etc., of the vehicle.
For more accuracy and precision, we practice the use of ATCC (Automatic Traffic counter and classifier) equipment, which is capable of counting vehicles according to their class with help of different non-intrusive technology such as video/photographic method based on infrared sensors tube etc. vehicles are classified into five types as Motorcycles / Two wheelers, Trucks / Buses, LMVs- Light Motor Vehicle, LCV- Light Commercial Vehicle Other, Machinery & Equipment Thus Traffic Study & Analysis is a major part of infrastructure development Traffic jams consume a lot of energy and time unnecessarily hence it is a big loss.
Lets conclude this by saying, Traffic Studies and respective analysis are the key services that plays a major and vital road for deciding and/or construction of any Transport Infrastructure. This also helps identifying and quantise the actual requirement while constructing the infrastructure to deliver the actual benefit, through it.
