Traffic Analysis and Solutions

Abstract

Urban mobility offers a unique opportunity to ensure development and radical improvement to the quality of urban life in the Multan City center. The traditional approach to transport planning usually aims only at solving technical issues, finding the solutions within its own discipline. On the contrary, we believe that transport planning is an integrated discipline within town planning and aims to promote an approach based on a reasonable and documented assumption. The scientific method aims to quantify the phenomena through the formulation of a hypothesis and the development of forecast scenarios.

The rapid increase in individual income leads to a physiological increase in the use of private vehicle: to curb this phenomenon it is necessary to develop an adequate, effective, modern, and high-quality public transport network and to limit the uncontrolled growth of road infrastructure. Moreover, together with the new public transport network, it is of paramount importance to redefine road sections incorporating lanes for unmotorized mobility, hence enhancing and regenerating public urban space. There are many recent examples, such as Delhi (India) or Bogotá (Colombia), among others, that show the effectiveness of similar interventions.

We propose a plan that consists of three steps: (1) a cognitive and qualitative analysis of the project area, (2) analysis of the existing transportation system, and (3) an implementation strategy divided in different phases (short, medium, and long term); for each scenario numerous design solutions and use constrains of the city’s street network have been developed. Our project also aims to characterize Multan’s roads and squares for achieving “re-balanced urban space”: multifunctional and multidimensional spaces not just only for motorized traffic but also carefully studied for public transport, pedestrians, and cyclists.

The proposed scenario is analyzed with GIS mapping techniques through which it is also possible to reconstruct the isochronous accessibility maps (comparative travel time analysis) and the PTAL (public transport accessibility level); this kind of scientific analysis permits highlighting the level of service and the index of accessibility in the Multan urban area.

A cost/benefit analysis of the proposed interventions (such as shuttle buses and MRTS) has also been developed, in order to verify the potential sustainability of the investment.