Active Traffic Management applications in Riyadh’s ring road
Active transportation and demand management (ATDM) is an approach to minimize the traffic congestions in the freeway, and it maximizes the efficiency of transportation system. For the past few years ATM has implemented in many cities around the world, which it has been proven it’s a viable solution for many traffic issues. By using several implications, ATDM can increase mobility, and provides safer trip for drivers. Dynamic traffic management uses can have distinct impacts and effectiveness in road networks. Riyadh has been recently experiencing increase in road riders and it has a potential growth in the population in the next 10 years. Also, due to lack of public transportation services, cars seem to be the main mode of transportation. As a result of that, the traffic flow in Riyadh’s ring road in, which provides access to every part of the city, breaks down due to the lack of traffic management. The main objectives of this paper are to provide viable ATDM implications that can leverage mobility and safety in the ring road of Riyadh. Also, the paper shows how ATDM is going to improve incident management.
POTENTIAL TRAFFIC IMPACT
The potential impact of integrating ATDM to the ring road is promising. Other existing ATDM projects indicate that the ATDM produced positive operational and safety benefits to the road network. The ATDM generally can positively impact the travel time during peak periods. Also, it has an effect on enhancing safety, and it shows a reduction in vehicle crashes. In particular, dynamic ramp meters would help to reduce the car crashes by 39%, and it can improve speed on the mainline and decrease the delay time by 8% and 18%, respectively. On the other hand, incorporating DMS, as well with sensors and specific algorithms, to Riyadh’s ring road would add flexibility to the road by dynamically adjusting speed limits, dynamically closing or opening of individual traffic lanes, and other implications. Also, it gives flexibility to change the use on a specific lane during the day to accommodate the change in demands. For example, the restriction of an HOV lane can be adjusted from two people per car to three people per car during the peak periods. Moreover using, VSL would reduce the number of accident injuries by 30% and increases the road capacity by 10%. In fact, these number is a rough estimate based on other ATDM projects that had been established in other countries. Generally, ATDM has been proven its positive influence on operation and safety over many projects. In UK, M42 motorway, mostly shares the same characteristics of Riyadh’s ring road, shows that increase in capacity and total flow by 7%, and 6%; respectively. Also, average crashes reduced by 63% after the implementation of ATDM (9). All in all, given an accurate estimate to the size of the impact on Riyadh’s ring road, is obtained due to the uncountable variables that influence traffic volume, and the unique road environment that Saudi Arabia has. However, ATDM will inevitable leave a positive impact on the ring road and help to establish the foundation for an intelligent road network.