Junction Improvement Planning and Design A Case Study for Whitefield in Mahadevpura Traffic Zone-Bangalore

Abstract

The growth of traffic in the road network of large cities in developing countries like India is a serious concern
from the traffic engineer’s point of view. The congestion at the intersection is most crucial because the performance of
intersection affects the performance and productivity of the whole road network most significantly. To reduce conflicts
and ensure orderly movement of traffic at the urban intersections, it is common practice to introduce fixed time traffic
signals at uncontrolled or priority controlled or traffic police controlled intersections if the conditions warrant its choice.
Due to the growth in economic activities, the city is attracting migrants. To serve this influx of population, residential
layouts are being developed. But adequate transport infrastructure facilities such as roads, grade separators, subways,
mass transit system, etc. To match this demands are conspicuously absent. The additional demand is to be catered by the
already saturated road network. Due to the inherent road network in Bangalore, there are on the average 2 major and 2
minor junctions per kilometer of road length. This has resulted in increase in travel time due to frequent bottlenecks and
breakdowns.
The number of motor vehicles registered in Bangalore increased from 2, 36,000 in 1983 to 6, 84,497 by 1992 and 35
lakhs by December 2009. Out of the total 35 lakhs registered vehicles in Bangalore, 26 lakh vehicles account for two
wheelers and 6 lakh vehicles account for car, which means 91.43% of total vehicles are personal vehicles.[1] This does
not include floating vehicle population. In a recent study done by CRRI, it has been reported that annual traffic growth
rates vary in the range of 2 – 4% in the central zone, 5 – 7% in the intermediate zone and 8 – 9% on the regional roads
in Bangalore city. CRRI study also reported delays of 26.8 sec per km of travel and 9.9 seconds per minute of travel.
Major problem in Bangalore city is delay in time and congestion due to longest queues during signal. The number of
vehicular conflicts at the point of intersections is being eliminated by traffic signals calculated from PCU’s. Due to lack
of adjacent land width to increase the capacity of roads the peak hourly traffic volume is increasing. Traffic related
problems have become regular phenomena on Bangalore roads, due to the vast developments. This fact is substantiated
by the traffic study results at various road networks and intersections of the city. Most of the major junctions of the core
city have crossed the mark of 10,000 pcu’s in the peak hour. Though number of grade separators have been constructed
and are being constructed, most of them are located in the developed part of the city and causing a trigger of congestion
at adjacent junctions.