INTRODUCTION
Traffic
counting is a measurement of traffic volumes, possibly one
of the first activities undertaken by Highway Authorities.
Certainly, traffic engineering has advanced tremendously since
the first volume counts were taken; however, volume counts
are still used for many purposes today. One use is in the
economic and reliable estimation of useful and standard measures
of traffic volume required for highway planning and design,
such as Average Daily Traffic and Design Hour Volume.
Traffic volume
can also be used for several different applications:
· In planning
street and highway systems or parts of systems, as an indication
of the need for road improvement (comparison of volume with
capacity).
· As an indication
of the need for and type of traffic control devices.
· As a base
for design. · In research.
· As a base for comparing certain characteristics among road
sections, e.g. accident rates.
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. The information has
been used for decisions in road maintenance, improvement planning
and management.
The responsibility
of conducting traffic counting periodically is assumed by
Operation Department of the Authority. Accordingly, collection
of raw traffic data is carried-out by maintenance districts
and guiding, supervising, checking, organizing the raw data,
analyzing and preparing the report is undertaken by Planning
and Programming Division.
Three seasonal
traffic counts were carried-out in the year 2002. As usual,
the traffic census was taken 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 further grouped
into four.
The report
consists information like volume and composition of traffic
on the Ethiopian roads and it also provides analysis of traffic
information of the year which will be used for maintenance,
construction, improvement planning and management needs of
Ethiopian Roads Authority. to read more on the report of the
PDF file format visit
here. |
