ASSESSING URBAN INTERSECTIONS DURING PEAK HOUR ALONG JALAN BAKRI, MUAR, JOHOR

Arterial provides high degree of mobility while also directly serving abutting land uses in major centres of municipal areas. It is connected to the higher and lower road hierarchy via intersections. The intersections play important roles in dispersing traffic flows which are coming from or towards central business district area. The performance of an intersection has been based on the control delay of approaching vehicles, waiting to continue their trip. According to the Jabatan Kerja Raya standard, level of service of up to D can be considered in accommodating current traffic flow. Otherwise, the traffic might experience longer waiting time which may contribute to other traffic related problems. Bandar Maharani in Muar District is a developing town in Johor State of Malaysia with its arterial aligned toward the centre of the town, creating a spider web look-alike road network. The arterial connect the central business district area of Bandar Maharani from south, north and east bounds. One of the main arterial is Jalan Bakri, connecting Bakri town to Bandar Maharani from south bound. This study was carried out to measure and assess the performance of 10 intersections along Jalan Bakri using the SIDRA Intersection 8.0 during peak hour flow in a weekday. Furthermore, this study analyses the effect of storage length to a pairing intersections network. A 12-hour commuter data acquisition was carried out to determine peak hour through the time-series plot. Later, the peak hour was selected for movement counting at intersections to obtain the most critical traffic flow during weekday. Videotaping method was used to record the movements and extracted manually for analysis purposes. Videotaping method consist of two different devices which are camcorder with 3 meters tripod and drone camera at at least 11 meters height. Based on the commuter data analysis, 70 percent traffic consist of cars, followed by 22 percent motorcycles and 7 and 1 percents of van/medium trucks and heavy trucks/buses, respectively. The highest rate of traffic was recorded between 5.30 to 6.30 PM with computed peak hour factor of 0.94. The individual analysis of intersections found that typical level of service F (worst) were recorded as expected during peak hour, except for INT004, INT005 and INT010 with level of service D, E and B, respectively. Findings showed that the longer the storage, the smaller the delay value and the better level of service of the segment. Influence of storage length with respect to assumed delay which was basically referred to level of service of intersection was strongly correlated with Pearson correlation value of -0.94 and statistically significant at 95 percent significant. The availability of longer storage was not only able to accommodate number of traffic but also shown that reduction of flow rate might be a solution to increase the performance of intersection network. The assessment of existing intersections is essential to constantly ascertain current performance for any implementation of sufficient improvement. The overall findings of this study can be useful for planning purposes by the local municipal council to provide better traffic flow for road users.