| Summary, etc |
Traffic congestion is a widespread issue in urban areas and was a problem many years ago up until now. Each day, a lot of people travel to and from work, schools and personal reasons. Nobody wanted to travel for hours to a supposed to be minutes travel time only, especially when everyone is rushing. Urban areas like highway roads need immediate solutions for the heavy traffic. This study aims to recommend an intervention in improving road traffic and read safety. Various research methods were utilized and used during the entirety of this study for the area that has calming measures and without calming measures. Through survey questionnaires and field notes and observations, the data was collected for three nonspecial days during Wednesday, Thursday and Friday each during peak hours. For the real time data traffic count, the researchers used Microsoft Excel software in analyzing the gathered data to compare the congestion levels, between 6:30 am 8:30 am. The result of level of service (LOS) for having calming measures is 0.89 and 0.87 for both lanes and falls under LoS D which indicates that it is High-density but stable flow While the Level of Service without calming measures is 0.98 and 0.97 categorizing to LoS E which indicates that traffic condition nearly reaches its capacity level with significantly reduced speed. As for the survey questionnaires, the researchers used paired sample T-test to compare the level of safety using the same software. After analyzing and computing the data collected with and without traffic calming measures, the mean results were 4.178 and 2.359 respectively, with a p-value of 5x10^-11. Therefore, it is evident that the respondents feel safer when calming measures are implemented. Without barriers, the results show that traffic volume became worse, therefore creating congestion. While having barriers, traffic congestion greatly reduced and improved the traffic flow based on data comparison. The researchers observed that a vehicle making a U-turn is the most common reason for congestion since drivers can do it freely without barriers While having barriers makes drivers follow traffic rules. In terms of safety level, according to the survey questionnaire data, it shows that it is safer for everyone to have traffic calming measures. Based on the data acquired results, it only shows that having traffic calming measures improves the safety and congestion level for both commuters and drivers
Keywords: Calming measures, Traffic congestion, Level of Service |