Traffic design 201 1

I Introduction

Growing human population demands strategy for growing settlements. In growing cities one of the biggest challenges is organizing and arranging transportation of people and goods. In modern cities that is not easy at all. New challenges need new ways of thinking. They push human creation skills to maximum. Urban environment impose redesigning in every field (communication, transportation, architecture etc.). Because of rapid increasing of human population in urban areas we are confronted with biggest problems from ever since man walks the earth. Can we find a dissent answer to all our challenges? Its hard to say. But till know, we did our homework, and we found solution for every problem well, almost every problem. From this point of view its not likely that we can expect chaotic income as a result of rapidly growing problems and when I say rapidly growing problems I mean in sense of their variety and their hugeness as well. But we can also say that the humans can expect bigger challenges in the future. In this part of my scholar work I must emphasize the negligent behaving of people on our natural environment. From this point of view I can surely predict our biggest problem in the future, and that is peoples neglecting limits of the nature. But thats not our subject in this work. On further pages of this work Ill try to give an answer what are the biggest challenges in modern urban environments regarding traffic and how to solve biggest issues.

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Growing economy and record number of people are scope of transportation challenges. Can a modern transport solutions give us answers to our enlarged needs? One of the paths on the road of answering to enlarged needs of transportation people and goods, in the way I see this problem, lays in modern approach to traffic design. Ill try to explain how modern urban environments work in sense of traffic, what are the biggest problems and how to exceed them. Traffic is a blood flow for our civilization. We cant imagine todays life without transportation. Our civilization is subordinated from transportation and traffic. Without traffic we will be thousands of years back in history. If world traffic stops for just one second someone calculated that we could expect losses of hundreds of billions dollars, in material costs. Cumulative consequences would be much, much worse. Traffic industry is one among ten others with biggest year income. Also, number of people who make money and support their families by working in this industry is significant. Todays traffic runs with several issues, such as crowd, bad infrastructure, lack of money. Crowded roads are problem because they increase traffic accidents, increase time for travelling and transportation costs. Bad roads are also one of the problematic issue and repercussions are the same as repercussions of crowded roads. Lack of money means bad maintenance of traffic infrastructure and like previous factor increase chances for traffic accidents, increase transportation time and costs etc. Main goals we expect from traffic to fulfill are: Safety Speed Comfort

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Are all goals simultaneously fulfilled? I guess we all could agree the answer is no. Hows that possible when we have such technical and technological assets? Are the richest countries less affected? Does global financial crisis has influence on transportation and traffic? That is too many questions and I dont know all the answers so I will keep my orientation on traffic design in modern cities.

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II Traffic design principles

Every modern city pays full attention to traffic design. Traffic design in every city is based on couple of traffic principles:

a) Green waves
b) Limited parking zones (city downtowns)

c) Pedestrian zones d) Circle detour (bypass a city) e) Crossroad with circle flow
f) Limited traffic for heavy load trucks in rush hour

a) Every city with intensive street traffic, with large number of vehicles has light

signalization. Light signalization is a vertical traffic signalization works using electricity. Traffic lights combine light and colors to determine order for passing crossroads. With different colors of lights (red, yellow and green) traffic lights are managing who will go first. Red means stop, yellow means prepare to go and green light means you can go. Every driver knows the rule and traffic on these crossroads is perfectly managed. This kind of traffic management is excellent tool even in smaller cities. Why were seeing traffic accidents on these crossroads? Its hard to explain. From my experience its because of lack of domestic education and because of arrogance. Green waves works together with the city safe speed limit. When vehicle pass one crossroad in some street with green light and you drive not more than 50 km/h you can drive through whole street without stopping on red light, all traffic lights will show green.
b) Limited parking zones are implemented in downtowns of larger cities. What is a main

benefit organizing parking time by zones? This traffic design tool limits parking time
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and by doing that drivers are forced to leave downtown faster. That fact significantly speed up traffic flow. Allows and increase flow of cars, easier parking, more parking space. Also financial effect is not a minor. Further, many drivers park away from downtown then use city transportation which decrease crowd. As we can see this traffic design tool bring us couple benefits as well as using of traffic lights.

c) Pedestrian zones are need of every modern city. We can find pedestrian zones in every

larger city we know, even in Vranje. What is the main purpose and benefit of this traffic design tool? Well, biggest danger for walking participants in traffic is a moving vehicle. It is very hard to avoid crossing of pedestrian paths and car lanes so safest place for pedestrian is always pedestrian zone. Influence on city economy is also a benefit, because all pedestrian zones are full with shopping malls, shops and workshops. Pedestrian zones are very interesting for tourists who visit our city. The money they spend buying stuff is always a benefit for city economy. Influence in ecological way of thinking is very big for every city, because pedestrian zones lower pollution. Thinking ecologically we can only imagine how big is influence on pollution in major cities like Nis or Belgrade, in example.

d) Main goal in using circle detour in traffic design is to direct transit traffic around the

city. Very powerful tool for every bigger city, especially for cities with increasing heavy duty traffic, like Belgrade. Big trucks and other vehicles which only transit Belgrade are directed from pay toll Bubanj potok to circle detour Ostruznica, back on E-75 highway Belgrade Zagreb, near Simanovci, after international airport Nikola Tesla in Surcin. On the next page (Picture number 1), you can see circle detour around Belgrade. Without heavy traffic city is less polluted, residents of Belgrade travel trough city much efficient and faster. In cities like Belgrade every minute less is valuable.

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Picture 1 Circle detour around Belgrade On the next picture you can see circle detour around city of Thessaloniki.

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Picture 2 Circle detour around Thessaloniki

e) Maybe it is hard to understand but every traffic engineer will say that the circle flow

crossroad is one of the greatest inventions in traffic design. Is really benefit from this kind of crossroad so significant? Well, I can fully agree with the traffic engineers. In our near past, in Vranje, we were witnesses of traffic jam. The crossroad about is crossroad in front of fire station Vranje (Picture number 3).

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Picture 3 Circle flow traffic crossroad in Vranje

Problem with this crossroad was with the bad traffic design. Implemented solution (traffic lights) was not in accordance with concrete problem and was not planned for concrete crossroad. Much better solution was circle traffic flow crossroad. That was obviously in short period of time after redesigning the crossroad. There is no more unnecessary waiting and number of cars passing this crossroad in time increased. I guess no one could imagine traffic jam on Slavija crossroad in Belgrade if there were traffic lights instead of circle flow traffic crossroad.

f)

Significant contribution to traffic order gives a solution which forbids heavy duty trucks to enter cities during rush hour. Rush hour is crowded with cars of people going to or from their work. Traffic engineer found a solution by stopping these trucks and lories on city outskirts. From 6:00 AM till 9:00 AM and from 3:00 PM till 6:00 PM they must not enter into city.

Even though these principles of traffic design are most implemented however they are not the only implemented principles. Engineers of traffic design create much more, following developing of traffic and peoples needs. In example, driving in downtown of Munich is forbidden for drivers whose cars are without Euro 5 pollution standard.

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III Main goals for traffic design engineers

Main goals are: a) Safety b) Fast transportation c) Comfort in transport

a) We can not emphasis the importance of traffic safety too much. Every days situations

show us there is a great challenge in front of traffic designers. If we can agree that you cannot be too much safe theres a question how to design traffic to increase safety? I think that we have to: follow traffic development, design new solutions and implement solutions for the specific problems.

b) Todays fast lane life style, dictate other life conditions. Imperative in such conditions

is a fast flowing traffic and fast transportation. In rapidly growing cities designing traffic to prevent traffic jams is almost impossible. The rush hour traffic jams in Los Angeles so far no solutions. In Belgrade, people travel to work distanced 12 km, for an hour, and hour when they go back home - that is two hours a day only in transportation. In my opinion solutions are better planning, improving of city transportation (lite metros) and finding ways for filling financial gaps.

c) Comfortable city transport is ideal so far, especially in larger urban environments.

Main reason why transportation in cities is far from comfortable is lack of money.
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Without money you cant increase number of transportation assets and you cant buy newer vehicles (busses, metros etc.). Old infrastructure, very sick economy and no competition result in low comfort standards of transportation in Vranje. No design solutions could help to find solution for this problem.

IV Conclusion

Finding solutions for all traffic problems based only on improvement of traffic design is not likely. Improvement of traffic flow, speed less crowds and jams is complex problem and demands sophisticate solution and eclectic approach of all aspects of traffic, not just design. Our problems exceed solutions given only by changes in design. Also, we need quick solutions, right away. Whether we are able to response to changed traffic conditions in rapidly growing urban environments or not, conclusion is that we have to act immediately and effectively. We have to design system before we continue seeking for partial solutions. Effective systems are more than a need. Effective system is a must. It is urgent task. We need better traffic engineers, we need better drivers, better infrastructure and of course more money for advanced projects in traffic. Traffic design can give us only partial solutions. But together with all traffic subjects and assets will surely give us expected results, first of all in traffic safety.

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