Managing Urban Traffic Congestion: Key Recommendations
- Much can be done to reduce the worst traffic congestion
Dynamic, affordable, liveable and attractive urban regions will
never be free of congestion. Road transport policies, however,
should seek to manage congestion on a cost-effective basis with
the aim of reducing the burden that excessive congestion imposes
upon travellers and urban dwellers throughout the urban road
network.
- Effective land use planning and appropriate levels of
public transport service are essential for delivering high
quality access in congested urban areas
Integrated land use and transport planning and coordinated
transport development involving all transport modes -
including appropriate levels of public transport - are
fundamentally important to the high quality access needed
in large urban areas.
- Road users want reliable door-to-door trips
that are free of stress
Road users generally accept a degree of road congestion but
attach a high value to the reliability and predictability
of road travel conditions. Reliability needs to be given
greater weight in assessing options and prioritising
congestion mitigation measures.
- Targeting travel time variability and the most
extreme congestion incidents can deliver rapid, tangible
and cost-effective improvements
Unreliable and extremely variable travel times impose the
greatest "misery" on road users. An increase in the
reliability and predictability of travel times can rapidly
reduce the cost associated with excessive congestion levels.
- The age of unmanaged access to highly-trafficked
urban roads is coming to an end
Most traditional congestion relief measures either free up
existing capacity or deliver new road capacity, which is
likely to be rapidly swamped with previously suppressed and
new demand, at least in economically dynamic cities. In
future, demand for use of highly trafficked roads will need
to be managed. Demand management strategies should take full
account of how residents and roadway users wish to see their
community develop as well as their longer term mobility
preferences.
- Transport authorities will inevitably need to
employ a combination of access, parking and road pricing
measures to lock in the benefits from operational and
infrastructure measures aimed at mitigating traffic
congestion
By comparison with non-road infrastructure managers,
road administrations generally have much less of a role -
if they are assigned any role at all - in managing
overall levels of demand. Often little consideration
is given to the question of whether overall demand for
use of the roadway system should be managed at all.
Management of roadway demand is increasingly likely
to be required in large urban areas.
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