Traffic Growth rate and Composition of Dhaka-Chittagong Highway (N-l) of Bangladesh: The Actual situation

摘要

In transportation planning and operations, analysis of traffic growth pattern and traffic composition carry great significance. Developing countries like Bangladesh has serious shortcoming in performing such analyses due to unavailability of required traffic data. In recent years ministry of communication of Bangladesh has established computerized toll plaza in different National Highways of Bangladesh such as Dhaka-Chittagong highway (N-1) that is one of the most vital highway of Bangladesh. Since the opening of computerized toll plaza on Meghna and Gomoti bridges along N-1 corridor in 2004, the toll collectors have been recording and preserving round-the-year continuous flow data in a systematic manner. The study has taken this prospect of utilizing four years of flow data along the corridor from the year 2006 to 2009 and has performed a traffic growth pattern and composition analyses. From the analyses, it has been found that the yearly growth of total traffic is about 21.03%, which is much higher than the factor presently used by transport authorities in Bangladesh. Besides, vehicle class wise traffic growth factors are analyzed and numbers of heavy vehicles like trucks are increased 1.5 times during the four year period. Moreover, traffic composition, particularly the proportion of heavy vehicles in a traffic stream, is a very important parameter of traffic flow. The average percentage of trucks are found from 2006 to 2009 is 34.40%. These figures can be more precisely obtained up to higher level of confidence by populating more traffic data into the framework established during this study. The transport authorities should take necessary actions for preserving longer period of continuous flow data in order to perform such analysis at a precise level. By using actual traffic growth and composition pattern curves and factors, it is possible to design more efficient highways in Bangladesh.