Traffic

Traffic survey is conducted to collect data on number of vehicles that pass a point on a highway facility during specified time period .The data collected may be put into subclasses, which may include directional movement, occupancy rate, vehicle classification, etc.

The information gathered from traffic survey does have many importance in Transport planning, Road design and maintenance. It also is a major input for different traffic and transportation analysis for:

Establishment of traffic volume trends
Evaluation of economic feasibility of highway projects.
Estimation of highway user revenues.
planning of highway activities.
Functional classification of highways.
Design of geometric characteristics & pavement design of highways.
etc.

The need and importance of reliable information on traffic volume of roads for transport planning and management has been strongly realized by ERA since the very beginning of its establishment. In order to avail information on volume and composition of road vehicular traffic for various purposes of analysis, ERA, since 1952, has been carrying-out traffic count survey three times a year on all roads under its responsibility.

This year, similarly to the previous years, three seasonal traffic counts were carried-out at 163 stations. The traffic counts were taken from Feb 01 to 07, July 01 to 07 and Nov. 01 to 07 respectively for the three cycles. In each of these cycles the data was collected for seven consecutive days for 12 - hours (6:00 AM - 6:00 PM) supplemented by a full 24-hour count on two of the weekdays (i.e. one on market day and the other on normal day). The raw data was collected manually using eight vehicle categories, which are grouped into four for the purpose of analysis.

This report is prepared to provide information regarding volume and composition of traffic on the Ethiopian road network in the year 2009 and it provides analysis of traffic information of the year, which will be used for maintenance, construction and improvement planning.