Traffic congestion

Traffic congestion is a condition on road networks that occurs as use increases, and is characterized by slower speeds, longer trip times, and increased vehicular queueing. The most common example is the physical use of roads by vehicles. When traffic demand is great enough that the interaction between vehicles slows the speed of the traffic stream, this results in some congestion.

As demand approaches the capacity of a road (or of the intersections along the road), extreme traffic congestion sets in. When vehicles are fully stopped for periods of time, this is colloquially known as a traffic jam or traffic snarl-up. Traffic congestion can lead to drivers becoming frustrated and engaging in road rage.

Causes


Traffic congestion occurs when a volume of traffic or modal split generates demand for space greater than the available road capacity; this point is commonly termed saturation. There are a number of specific circumstances which cause or aggravate congestion; most of them reduce the capacity of a road at a given point or over a certain length, or increase the number of vehicles required for a given volume of people or goods. About half of U.S. traffic congestion is recurring, and is attributed to sheer weight of traffic; most of the rest is attributed to traffic incidents, road work and weather events.

Traffic research still cannot fully predict under which conditions a "traffic jam" (as opposed to heavy, but smoothly flowing traffic) may suddenly occur. It has been found that individual incidents (such as accidents or even a single car braking heavily in a previously smooth flow) may cause ripple effects (a cascading failure) which then spread out and create a sustained traffic jam when, otherwise, normal flow might have continued for some time longer.

Mathematical theories
Some traffic engineers have attempted to apply the rules of fluid dynamics to traffic flow, likening it to the flow of a fluid in a pipe. Congestion simulations and real-time observations have shown that in heavy but free flowing traffic, jams can arise spontaneously, triggered by minor events ("butterfly effects"), such as an abrupt steering maneuver by a single motorist. Traffic scientists liken such a situation to the sudden freezing of supercooled fluid.

However, unlike a fluid, traffic flow is often affected by signals or other events at junctions that periodically affect the smooth flow of traffic. Alternative mathematical theories exist, such as Boris Kerner's three-phase traffic theory (see also spatiotemporal reconstruction of traffic congestion).

Because of the poor correlation of theoretical models to actual observed traffic flows, transportation planners and highway engineers attempt to forecast traffic flow using empirical models. Their working traffic models typically use a combination of macro-, micro- and mesoscopic features, and may add matrix entropy effects, by "platooning" groups of vehicles and by randomising the flow patterns within individual segments of the network. These models are then typically calibrated by measuring actual traffic flows on the links in the network, and the baseline flows are adjusted accordingly.

A team of MIT mathematicians has developed a model that describes the formation of "phantom jams," in which small disturbances (a driver hitting the brake too hard, or getting too close to another car) in heavy traffic can become amplified into a full-blown, self-sustaining traffic jam. Key to the study is the realization that the mathematics of such jams, which the researchers call "jamitons," are strikingly similar to the equations that describe detonation waves produced by explosions, says Aslan Kasimov, lecturer in MIT's Department of Mathematics. That discovery enabled the team to solve traffic-jam equations that were first theorized in the 1950s.

Economic theories
Congested roads can be seen as an example of the tragedy of the commons. Because roads in most places are free at the point of usage, there is little financial incentive for drivers not to over-use them, up to the point where traffic collapses into a jam, when demand becomes limited by opportunity cost. Privatization of highways and road pricing have both been proposed as measures that may reduce congestion through economic incentives and disincentives. Congestion can also happen due to non-recurring highway incidents, such as a crash or roadworks, which may reduce the road's capacity below normal levels.

Economist Anthony Downs argues that rush hour traffic congestion is inevitable because of the benefits of having a relatively standard work day. In a capitalist economy, goods can be allocated either by pricing (ability to pay) or by queueing (first-come first-served); congestion is an example of the latter. Instead of the traditional solution of making the "pipe" large enough to accommodate the total demand for peak-hour vehicle travel (a supply-side solution), either by widening roadways or increasing "flow pressure" via automated highway systems, Downs advocates greater use of road pricing to reduce congestion (a demand-side solution, effectively rationing demand), in turn plowing the revenues generated therefrom into public transportation projects.

A 2011 study in the The American Economic Review indicates that there may be a "fundamental law of road congestion."The researchers, from the University of Toronto and the London School of Economics, analyzed data from the U.S. Highway Performance and Monitoring System for 1983, 1993 and 2003, as well as information on population, employment, geography, transit, and political factors. They determined that the number of vehicle-kilometers traveled (VKT) increases in direct proportion to the available lane-kilometers of roadways. The implication is that building new roads and widening existing ones only results in additional traffic that continues to rise until peak congestion returns to the previous level.

Classification
Qualitative classification of traffic is often done in the form of a six letter A-F level of service (LOS) scale defined in the Highway Capacity Manual, a US document used (or used as a basis for national guidelines) worldwide. These levels are used by transportation engineers as a shorthand and to describe traffic levels to the lay public. While this system generally uses delay as the basis for its measurements, the particular measurements and statistical methods vary depending on the facility being described. For instance, while the percent time spent following a slower-moving vehicle figures into the LOS for a rural two-lane road, the LOS at an urban intersection incorporates such measurements as the number of drivers forced to wait through more than one signal cycle.

Traffic congestion occurs in time and space, i.e., it is a spatiotemporal process. Therefore, another classification schema of traffic congestion is associated with some common spatiotemporal features of traffic congestion found in measured traffic data. Common spatiotemporal empirical features of traffic congestion are those features, which are qualitatively the same for different highways in different countries measured during years of traffic observations. Common features of traffic congestion are independent on weather, road conditions and road infrastructure, vehicular technology, driver characteristics, day time, etc. Examples of common features of traffic congestion are the features [J] and [S] for, respectively, the wide moving jam and synchronized flow traffic phases found in Kerner’s three-phase traffic theory. The common features of traffic congestion can be reconstructed in space and time with the use of the ASDA and FOTO models.

Negative impacts
Traffic congestion has a number of negative effects:
 * Wasting time of motorists and passengers ("opportunity cost"). As a non-productive activity for most people, congestion reduces regional economic health.
 * Delays, which may result in late arrival for employment, meetings, and education, resulting in lost business, disciplinary action or other personal losses.
 * Inability to forecast travel time accurately, leading to drivers allocating more time to travel "just in case", and less time on productive activities.
 * Wasted fuel increasing air pollution and carbon dioxide emissions owing to increased idling, acceleration and braking.
 * Wear and tear on vehicles as a result of idling in traffic and frequent acceleration and braking, leading to more frequent repairs and replacements.
 * Stressed and frustrated motorists, encouraging road rage and reduced health of motorists
 * Emergencies: blocked traffic may interfere with the passage of emergency vehicles traveling to their destinations where they are urgently needed.
 * Spillover effect from congested main arteries to secondary roads and side streets as alternative routes are attempted ('rat running'), which may affect neighborhood amenity and real estate prices.[[Image:Noratrun.jpg|thumb|During [[rush hour]], right turns onto the side street shown here are prohibited in order to prevent rat running]]
 * Higher chance of collisions due to tight spacing and constant stopping-and-going.

Road rage
Road rage is aggressive or angry behavior by a driver of an automobile or other motor vehicle. Such behavior might include rude gestures, verbal insults, deliberately driving in an unsafe or threatening manner, or making threats. Road rage can lead to altercations, assaults, and collisions which result in injuries and even deaths. It can be thought of as an extreme case of aggressive driving.

The term originated in the United States in 1987–1988 (specifically, from Newscasters at KTLA, a local television station), when a rash of freeway shootings occurred on the 405, 110 and 10 freeways in Los Angeles, California. These shooting sprees even spawned a response from the AAA Motor Club to its members on how to respond to drivers with road rage or aggressive maneuvers and gestures.

Positives of traffic congestion
It does not follow that congestion is an evil that should be fought at all costs.

Congestion has the benefit of encouraging motorists to re-time their trips so that expensive road space is in full use for a greater number of hours per day.

The standard response to congestion is to expand road space somehow, perhaps by widening an existing road or else by adding a new road, bridge or tunnel. However, this could well result in increased traffic flow, otherwise known as induced demand, causing congestion to appear somewhere else. Moreover, Braess's paradox shows that adding road capacity might make congestion worse even if demand does not increase.

It has been argued that traffic congestion, by reducing road speeds in cities, could reduce the frequency and severity of road accidents.

Countermeasures
It has been suggested by some commentators that the level of congestion that society tolerates is a rational (though not necessarily conscious) choice between the costs of improving the transportation system (in infrastructure or management) and the benefits of quicker travel. Others link it largely to subjective lifestyle choices, differentiating between car-owning and car-free households.

Road infrastructure

 * Junction improvements
 * Grade separation, using bridges (or, less often, tunnels) freeing movements from having to stop for other crossing movements
 * Ramp signalling, 'drip-feeding' merging traffic via traffic signals onto a congested motorway-type roadway
 * Reducing junctions
 * Local-express lanes, providing through lanes that bypass junction on-ramp and off-ramp zones
 * Limited-access road, roads that limit the type and amounts of driveways along their lengths
 * Reversible lanes, where certain sections of highway operate in the opposite direction on different times of the day/ days of the week, to match asymmetric demand. These pose a potential for collisions, if drivers do not notice the change in direction indicators. This may be controlled by variable-message signs or by movable physical separation
 * Separate lanes for specific user groups (usually with the goal of higher people throughput with fewer vehicles)404HOV lane.png in Southern Ontario are separated by a stripped buffer zone that breaks occasionally to allow vehicles to enter and exit the HOV lane.]]
 * Bus lanes as part of a busway system
 * HOV lanes, for vehicles with at least three (sometimes at least two) riders, intended to encourage carpooling
 * Slugging, impromptu carpooling at HOV access points, on a hitchhiking or payment basis
 * Market-based carpooling with pre-negotiated financial incentives for the driver

Urban planning and design
City planning and urban design practices can have a huge impact on levels of future traffic congestion, though they are of limited relevance for short-term change.
 * Grid plans including fused grid road network geometry, rather than tree-like network topology which branches into cul-de-sacs (which reduce local traffic, but increase total distances driven and discourage walking by reducing connectivity). This avoids concentration of traffic on a small number of arterial roads and allows more trips to be made without a car.
 * Zoning laws that encourage mixed-use development, which reduces distances between residential, commercial, retail, and recreational destinations (and encourage cycling and walking)
 * Carfree cities, car-light cities, and eco-cities designed to eliminate the need to travel by car for most inhabitants.
 * Transit-oriented development are residential and commercial areas designed to maximize access to public transport by providing a transit station or stop (train station, metro station, tram stop, or bus stop).

Supply and demand
Congestion can be reduced by either increasing road capacity (supply), or by reducing traffic (demand). Capacity can be increased in a number of ways, but needs to take account of latent demand otherwise it may be used more strongly than anticipated. Critics of the approach of adding capacity have compared it to "fighting obesity by letting out your belt" (inducing demand that did not exist before). For example, when new lanes are created, households with a second car that formerly was parked most of the time may begin to use this second car for commuting. Reducing road capacity has in turn been attacked as removing free choice as well as increasing travel costs and times, placing an especially high burden on the low income residents who must commute to work.

Increased supply can include:
 * Adding more capacity at bottlenecks (such as by adding more lanes at the expense of hard shoulders or safety zones, or by removing local obstacles like bridge supports and widening tunnels)
 * Adding more capacity over the whole of a route (generally by adding more lanes)
 * Creating new routes
 * Traffic management improvements (see separate section below)

Reduction of demand can include:
 * Parking restrictions, making motor vehicle use less attractive by increasing the monetary and non-monetary costs of parking, introducing greater competition for limited city or road space. Most transport planning experts agree that free parking distorts the market in favour of car travel, exacerbating congestion.
 * Park and ride facilities allowing parking at a distance and allowing continuation by public transport or ride sharing. Park-and-ride car parks are commonly found at metro stations, freeway entrances in suburban areas, and at the edge of smaller cities.
 * Reduction of road capacity to force traffic onto other travel modes. Methods include traffic calming and the shared space concept.
 * Road pricing, charging money for access onto a road/specific area at certain times, congestion levels or for certain road users
 * "Cap and trade", in which only licensed cars are allowed on the roads. A limited quota of car licences are issued each year and traded in a free market fashion. This guarantees that the number of cars does not exceed road capacity while avoiding the negative effects of shortages normally associated with quotas. However since demand for cars tends to be inelastic, the result are exorbitant purchase prices for the licenses, pricing out the lower levels of society, as seen Singapore's Certificate of Entitlement scheme.
 * Congestion pricing, where a certain area, such as the inner part of a congested city, is surrounded with a cordon into which entry with a car requires payment. The cordon may be a physical boundary (i.e., surrounded by toll stations) or it may be virtual, with enforcement being via spot checks or cameras on the entry routes. Major examples are Singapore's electronic road pricing, the London congestion charge system, Stockholm congestion tax and the use of HOT lanes predominately in North America.
 * Road space rationing, where regulatory restrictions prevent certain types of vehicles from driving under certain circumstances or in certain areas.
 * Number plate restrictions based on days of the week, as practiced in several large cities in the world, such as Athens, Mexico City, Manila and São Paulo. In effect, such cities are banning a different part of the automobile fleet from roads each day of the week. Mainly introduced to combat smog, these measures also reduce congestion. A weakness of this method is that richer drivers can purchase a second or third car to circumvent the ban.
 * Permits, where only certain types of vehicles (such as residents) are permitted to enter a certain area, and other types (such as through-traffic) are banned. For example, Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris, has proposed to impose a complete ban on motor vehicles in the city's inner districts, with exemptions only for residents, businesses, and the disabled.
 * Policy approaches, which usually attempt to provide either strategic alternatives or which encourage greater usage of existing alternatives through promotion, subsidies or restrictions.
 * Incentives to use public transport, increasing modal shares. This can be achieved through infrastructure investment, subsidies, transport integration, pricing strategies that decrease the marginal cost/fixed cost ratios, improved timetabling and greater priority for buses to reduce journey time e.g. [Bus Lanes], [BTR].
 * Cycling promotion through legislation, cycle facilities, subsidies, and awareness campaigns. The Netherlands has been pursuing cycle friendly policies for decades, and around a quarter of their commuting is done by bicycle.
 * Promotion of more flexible work place practices. For example, a flexible workplaces pilot was undertaken in Brisbane, Australia during 2009 to test the applicability of a voluntary travel behaviour change program to achieve transport system outcomes, particularly as they related to managing congestion, either through mode shift or peak spreading. During the one-month Pilot, amongst almost 900 Brisbane CBD workers across 20 private and public sector organisations, shifts of more than 30% out of the morning and afternoon peak travel was recorded.
 * Telecommuting encouraged through legislation and subsidies.
 * Online shopping promotion, potentially with automated delivery booths helping to solve the last mile problem and reduce shopping trips made by car.

Traffic management
Use of so-called Intelligent transportation system, which guide traffic:
 * Traffic reporting, via radio, GPS and mobile apps, to advise road users
 * Variable message signs installed along the roadway, to advise road users
 * Navigation systems, possibly linked up to automatic traffic reporting
 * Traffic counters permanently installed, to provide real-time traffic counts
 * Convergence indexing road traffic monitoring, to provide information on the use of highway on-ramps
 * Automated highway systems, a future idea which could reduce the safe interval between cars (required for braking in emergencies) and increase highway capacity by as much as 100% while increasing travel speeds
 * Parking guidance and information systems providing dynamic advice to motorists about free parking
 * Active Traffic Management system opens up UK motorway hard shoulder as an extra traffic lane, it uses CCTV and VMS to control and monitor the traffic's use of the extra lane

Other associated

 * School opening times arranged to avoid rush hour traffic (in some countries, private car school pickup and drop-off traffic are substantial percentages of peak hour traffic).
 * Considerate driving behaviour promotion and enforcement. Driving practices such as tailgating and frequent lane changes can reduce a road's capacity and exacerbate jams. In some countries signs are placed on highways to raise awareness, while others have introduced legislation against inconsiderate driving.
 * Visual barriers to prevent drivers from slowing down out of curiosity (often called "rubbernecking" in the United States). This often includes accidents, with traffic slowing down even on roadsides physically separated from the crash location. This also tends to occur at construction sites, which is why some countries have introduced rules that motorway construction has to occur behind visual barrier
 * Speed limit reductions, as practiced on the M25 motorway in London. With lower speeds allowing cars to drive closer together, this increases the capacity of a road. Note that this measure is only effective if the interval between cars is reduced, not the distance itself. Low intervals are generally only safe at low speeds.
 * Lane splitting/filtering, in which some jurisdictions allow motorcycles, scooters and bicycles to travel in the space between cars, buses, and trucks.

Australia
Traffic during peak hours in major Australian cities, such as Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth, is usually very congested and can cause considerable delay for motorists. Australians rely mainly on radio and television to obtain current traffic information. GPS, webcams, and online resources are increasingly being used to monitor and relay traffic conditions to motorists.

Bangladesh
Traffic jams have become intolerable in Dhaka. Although a modern city should have 25 per cent of its total area devoted to road use, Dhaka has only 7 per cent. Some other major reasons are the total absence of a rapid transit system; the lack of an integrated urban planning scheme for over 30 years; poorly maintained road surfaces, with potholes rapidly eroded further by frequent flooding and poor or non-existent drainage; haphazard stopping and parking; poor driving standards; total lack of alternative routes, with several narrow and (nominally) one-way roads.

Brazil
According to Time magazine, São Paulo has the world's worst daily traffic jams. According to reports from the Companhia de Engenharia de Tráfego, the city's traffic management agency, the historical congestion record was set on November 15, 2013, with 309 km of cumulative queues around the city during the evening rush hour. However, according to the firm MapLink, which tracks congestion from about 800,000 vehicles using onboard GPS, cumulative queues reached 562 km during the same period. The previous record was set on July 26, 2013, with 300 km of cumulative queues.

Despite implementation since 1997 of road space rationing by the last digit of the plate number during rush hours every weekday, traffic in this 20-million-strong city still experiences severe congestion. According to experts, this is due to the accelerated rate of motorization occurring since 2003 and the limited capacity of public transport. In São Paulo, traffic is growing at a rate of 7.5% per year, with almost 1,000 new cars bought in the city every day. The subway has only 61 km of lines, though 35 further kilometers are under construction or planned by 2010. Every day, many citizens spend between three up to four hours behind the wheel. In order to mitigate the aggravating congestion problem, since June 30, 2008 the road space rationing program was expanded to include and restrict trucks and light commercial vehicles.

Canada
According to the Toronto Board of Trade, in 2010, Toronto is ranked as the most congested city of 19 surveyed cities, with an average commute time of 80 minutes.

China
The August 2010 China National Highway 110 traffic jam in Hebei province, China, is considered the world's worst traffic jam ever, as traffic congestion stretched more than 100 km from August 14 to the 26, including at least 11 days of total gridlock. The event was caused by a combination of road works and thousands of coal trucks from Inner Mongolia’s coalfields that travel daily to Beijing. The New York Times has called this event the "Great Chinese Gridlock of 2010."

Towards the end of 2010, Beijing announced a series of drastic measures to tackle the city's traffic jam, including limiting the number of new plates issued to passenger cars to 20,000 a month and barring cars of non-Beijing plates from entering areas within the Fifth Ring Road during rush hours.

India
India has a large number of increasing vehicles as the increasing number of middle class can now afford to buy the vehicles. Although India has launched various rapid transit like Kolkata Metro, Delhi Metro and the Namma Metro and The Janmarg Ahemdabad BRT service but traffic is still a problem in India. India has more plans of increasing rapid transit systems.

New Zealand
New Zealand has followed strongly car-oriented transport policies since after World War II (especially in Auckland, where one third of the country's population lives), and currently has one of the highest car-ownership rates per capita in the world, after the United States.

Turkey
In recent years, Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality made huge investments on intelligent transportation systems and public transportation. Despite that, traffic is a main problem in İstanbul. İstanbul has chosen the second most congested and the most sudden-stopping traffic in the world. Travel times in Turkey’s largest city take on average 55 percent longer that they should, even in relatively less busy hours.

United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom the inevitability of congestion in some urban road networks has been officially recognized since the Department for Transport set down policies based on the report Traffic in Towns in 1963: Even when everything that it is possibly to do by way of building new roads and expanding public transport has been done, there would still be, in the absence of deliberate limitation, more cars trying to move into, or within our cities than could possibly be accommodated..

The Department for Transport sees growing congestion as one of the most serious transport problems facing the UK. On 1 December 2006, Rod Eddington published a UK government-sponsored report into the future of Britain's transport infrastructure. The Eddington Transport Study set out the case for action to improve road and rail networks, as a "crucial enabler of sustained productivity and competitiveness". Eddington has estimated that congestion may cost the economy of England £22 bn a year in lost time by 2025. He warned that roads were in serious danger of becoming so congested that the economy would suffer. At the launch of the report Eddington told journalists and transport industry representatives introducing road pricing to encourage drivers to drive less was an "economic no-brainer". There was, he said "no attractive alternative". It would allegedly cut congestion by half by 2025, and bring benefits to the British economy totalling £28 bn a year.

United States
The Texas Transportation Institute estimated that, in 2000, the 75 largest metropolitan areas experienced 3.6 billion vehicle-hours of delay, resulting in 5.7 billion U.S. gallons (21.6 billion liters) in wasted fuel and $67.5 billion in lost productivity, or about 0.7% of the nation's GDP. It also estimated that the annual cost of congestion for each driver was approximately $1,000 in very large cities and $200 in small cities. Traffic congestion is increasing in major cities and delays are becoming more frequent in smaller cities and rural areas.

According to traffic analysis firm INRIX in 2011, the Top 10 Worst US Traffic Cities are:


 * 1) Honolulu: Drivers waste 58 hours in traffic;
 * 2) New York: Drivers waste 57 hours in traffic;
 * 3) Los Angeles: Drivers waste 56 hours in traffic;
 * 4) San Francisco: Drivers waste 48 hours in traffic;
 * 5) Washington, D.C.: Drivers waste 45 hours in traffic;
 * 6) Bridgeport, CT: Drivers waste 42 hours in traffic;
 * 7) Chicago: Drivers waste 36 hours in traffic;
 * 8) Boston: Drivers waste 35 hours in traffic;
 * 9) Seattle: Drivers waste 33 hours in traffic;
 * 10) Austin: Drivers waste 30 hours in traffic;

The most congested highway in the United States, according to a 2010 study of freight congestion (truck speed and travel time), is Chicago's Interstate 290 at the Circle Interchange. The average truck speed was just 29 mi/h.